vnStat - network traffic monitor for Linux

vnStat is a network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface(s). vnStat isn't a packet sniffer. The traffic information is analyzed from the /proc -filesystem, so vnStat can be used without root permissions. However at least a 2.2.x kernel is required.

Some time ago (in 2002) I felt that I needed some kind of network traffic monitor to see how much traffic my server/router actually generated. I had been using mrtg for a while but the problem with it was that it didn't tell how many megabytes the daily traffic was.

Next I tested ntop, but it had far too many features compared to my needs. Then I found darkstat that was much smaller and stabler, but after using it for about a week, I came to a conclusion that a packet sniffer wasn't what I needed since it generates too much cpu load when the network traffic is near 10MB/s and requires the process running with root permissions. Since I needed something really simple but stable, I decided to write it by myself.