bandwit

bandwit is a terminal based bandwidth monitor that runs on Linux and BSD.

The defining characteristic of bandwit is that it runs inline in your terminal, without taking over the whole terminal screen like curses programs do.

Keyboard controls

• Enter - Move the cursor one line down, enlarging the bandwit screen by one line.

• r - Switch to viewing bytes received.

• t - Switch to viewing bytes transmitted.

• c - Toggle between a linear, log10, and log2 scale.

• s - Toggle between aggregating by average or by sum.

• ArrowUp / ArrowDown - Increase/decrease the aggregation window where one column represents either:

  • One second.

  • One minute.

  • One hour.

  • One day.

• ArrowLeft / ArrowRight - Scroll through historical data.

• q - Quit the program.

Data sources

In Linux there are lots of places to get this information:

• /sys/class/net/<iface>/statistics/{r,t}x_bytes is the most convenient as it's a file with literally just the number we want in it.
• /proc/net/dev requires finding the right line and parsing the right integers.
• ip -statistics link show dev <iface> requires finding the right lines and parsing the right integers.

In BSD there is only one way I know that doesn't require linking against system libraries:

• netstat -ibn requires finding the right line and parsing the right integers.

Portability

• Written using C++17.