High network usage

andre.ramaciotti · 2008-12-02 02:11:44

My broadband provider sets a limit of data I can download a month. I've never reached it, but I like to know how much of it I've been using. So I've made a little script that runs when I'm shutting down my computer.

Sometimes I get high values. Maybe my script is not that good, but I'd like to be sure, it that any log where I can see network usage?

The output of the log my script generates is the following:

2008-11-30 16:42:00: 121.0
2008-12-01 00:03:29: 49.0
2008-12-01 21:03:20: 92.1
2008-12-01 21:06:39: 313.2
2008-12-01 21:07:38: 0.0
2008-12-01 21:08:32: 0.0

As you can see, I've rebooted sometimes because I was fussing with my grubs options. The problem is how would I use 313MB in three minutes? I'm not sure about this one, maybe it should be KBs and my script isn't aware of it, but some other days I've got some really high usage, if comparing with the mean.

I know you're smiling and thinking 'pron', but well, others days when I've watched it, my internet usage didn't grew up so high.

Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

fukawi2 · 2008-12-02 03:10:36

Showing (or telling) us how your script calculates this info would help...

I'm going to assume for the moment that it parses the output of `ifconfig eth0` or something similar and grep / sed's out the RX bytes field... If that's the case, then that data is everything that passes over the interface, even if it doesn't go to the internet (ie, local LAN traffix to your computer)...

Also, as a side note, if you're running 32-bit kernel, it will wrap back to 0 bytes after 4gb.

andre.ramaciotti · 2008-12-02 11:38:59

Yes, that was I'm doing, parsing ifconfig eth0

My local LAN is quite small, only my computer, my parent's one and a router. I don't know what other kind of traffic could reach so high values. And actually, I'm more worried if my computer haven't been hacked or something, but as the high values aren't constant, I'll assume it's not a serious threat.

Thanks.

edit: oh, I've just realized that it's my script fault. It can't differentiate KB from MB, I'll have to improve it. Sorry to bother you.

Last edited by andre.ramaciotti (2008-12-02 11:43:50)

piete · 2009-01-02 02:23:07

Hi! My network provider also sets a monthly quota. When I type ifconfig two times in a row, the RX packets and RX bytes fields (on eth0 connection) have increased in between even if I don't have any programs running. I don't even have any LAN, just my computer directly to the cable modem, so it can't be "internal" traffic. Yesterday I tried to get some help on the irc channel (after 15 years break!) but I'm afraid I could not express the problem clearly enough. So here it is again:
I seems that there is some traffic ongoing in the network "by itself" (about 1Kbytes per second). I'd like to know what causes this traffic (daemons, handshaking (?), etc) and if it really is network traffic how I can stop it. My monthly quota is 1GB, and 1KB/s is 60KB/min, 3,6MB/hour and so on, if my computer is running and the network cable is plugged, I would use up my quota keeping the computer just on for 300 hours (okay, this can't be considered as HIGH network usage but the problem still bothers me).
When there are no programs running (i.e. no network traffic by me), the iftop output is following:
255.255.255.255:bootpc => 10.152.0.1:bootps 0b 0b 0b
<= 5Kb 4Kb 4Kb
255.255.255.255:bootpc => 10.174.0.1:bootps 0b 0b 0b
<= 0b 0b 325b (these latter two lines do not appear all the time)

So the actual question is: is this network traffic? I'm too dumb to understand the netstat output, but in the last column (PATH) there are for example following instances:
/tmp/wpa_ctrl_4426-0
/var/run/wpa_supplicant/wlan0
@/org/kernel/udev/udevd
@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event
/dev/log
/dev/gpmctl
@/var/run/hald/dbus-jnkKRHFtYL
/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket
/var/run/acpid.socket

some of those are there several times with different I-Nodes.

I did try to dig this deeper by googleing, but I guess my network knowledge is not sufficient to know how to look for correct things. Moreover, this surely is a general question, but Arch Linux users are on the average more knowledgeable people (I'm balancing the scale), so I'm sure somebody knows the answer just like that.

If you want more complete outputs, please wait until I install and configure a WM, I'm writing this from links

P.S. This phenomenon does not occur on wlan0 (at least yesterday it did not).

Arch Linux

#1 2008-12-02 02:11:44

High network usage

#2 2008-12-02 03:10:36

Re: High network usage

#3 2008-12-02 11:38:59

Re: High network usage

#4 2009-01-02 02:23:07

Re: High network usage

Board footer