nload - Monitor your internet speed in the Terminal

nload is a terminal based application for linux which monitors network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time. It monitors the in- and outgoing traffic using two graphs and provides additional info like the total amount of transferred data and min/max network usage.
It displays the total amount of data that has been transferred over a network device since the last reboot, the current bandwidth usage, and the minimum, maximum, and average bandwidth usage measured since it started.

How to Install nload

nload comes pre-installed with Ubuntu, so you can use it directly. If it is not installed on your system then, open terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) and run the following command

$ sudo apt-get install nload

How to use it

Step 1: You can use nload by simply typing nload in the terminal, if you haven't provided any interface then it will display information for all network interfaces starting with eth0 (which is default). To Toggle between different network interfaces, use arrows keys.

$ nload

Decoding nload Output

Incoming: Data for incoming traffic:
Curr: 23.53 kBit/s current, speed right now
Avg: 11.28 kBit/s average
Min: 33.67 kBit/s Minimum, in the observed period
Max: 0.28 kBit/s Maximum, in the observe period
Ttl: 14.34 GByte total volume transferred

Outgoing: Data outgoing traffic:
Curr: 56.29 kBit/s (same as above)
Avg: 56.24 kBit/s
Min: 44.77 kBit/s
Max: 79.67 kBit/s
Ttl: 982.78 MByte

Step 2: You can check specific network interface by specifying its name.

$ nload lo

Note: lo is a loopback network interface.

Step 3: You can check different network interfaces in same window by typing following command

$ nload -m lo ppp0

Step 4: nload uses bits/s as default unit to show traffic numbers, you can change it by specifying -u h|k|m. h - bits/s (Defualt) , k - kBits/s, m- Mbits/s.

$ nload -u k ppp0

Note: As you can see in the output, the total data field(Ttl) is still in Mbytes, You can change that field by using -U(capital) option.

$ nload -U k ppp0

Step 5: To know more about nload refer man page or use help command

$ man nload
$ nload --help

That's it. Hope you have Enjoyed the post.

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