Tracking Linux Network Stats with vnStat

Linux expert Brian Proffitt provides an overview of vnStat, the popular Linux networking tool.

Getting network stats on a Linux machine is not particularly difficult. With tools like sar, Iperf, and vnStat available for nearly every distribution, command-line aficionados can get the low-down on their network with just a few useful commands.

Take, for instance, vnStat, a popular network traffic logger. vnStat is different from a network sniffer like Wireshark since it polls the network interface stats going to and from the kernel. Wireshark, on the other hand, actually monitors packets coming in and out of your machine.

As useful as vnStat is, it is still predominantly a command-line application, which can make it tricky to visualize what’s going on with your machine’s network interface. But there does exist a useful PHP-based front-end for vnStat that can generate useful reports from vnStat logs.

In this article, you’ll see how to use vnStat, and then learn how to install the Web-based GUI to see your data, not just read it. For this article, we’ll be using the tools in Ubuntu Desktop 10.10.

Read the rest at Enterprise Networking Planet.