Display simple throughput statistics for network interface controllers. Requires Linux kernel >= 2.6

Output can be viewed in terminal. Additionally you’ll find the output in a file suitable for parsing from within your application. The program can be executed as daemon to provide you reliable network throughput numbers at any given time.

eth0 thruput [bytes/s]                      total               1s               5s              15s  
Receiving                                 1982418              416              416              412  
Transmitting                              4029588             1296             1296             1287 

Method 1: Packaged installation

$ # make sure easy_install it there (debian): 
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install ifstat  

Method 2: Source installation

$ git clone https://github.com/prinzdezibel/ifstat  
$ cd ifstat  
$ python setup.py develop  

$ ifstat --help

Start program as foreground or daemon process. Throughput numbers will be written to a file periodically:

$ cat /var/lib/ifstat/thruput.txt

Parse this file to retrieve relevant data for your application.