Introduction

In this tutorial, we will learn how to install and use three great command-line programs for network monitoring, or in other words, how to find out which programs are using bandwidth.

For this tutorial, we are using Ubuntu 24.04 distribution; however, you should be able to use it for all Debian and Ubuntu distributions we offer on Time4VPS.

1. Starting from our system update

To do so, run the command:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

2. Nethogs

It is an open-source command-line program used to monitor real-time network traffic and bandwidth usage by each process or application.

To install, run the command:

sudo apt install nethogs

To verify the installation:

nethogs -V

That's it; Nethogs is installed and ready to use.

To open nethogs, run:

nethogs

Output example:

3. IPTraf

It is another excellent way to monitor network traffic.

It offers several interactive monitoring interfaces.

To install it, run

sudo apt install iptraf-ng

To start the service:

iptraf-ng

Output example:

4. Netstat (network statistics)

It is a command-line network utility tool that displays network connections for the Transmission Control Protocol (both incoming and outgoing), routing tables, and a number of network interface and network protocol statistics. It is highly flexible and powerful.

To install, run: