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R11G
Asked: 2012-07-17 10:15:25 +0800 CST

How to check data usage of a USB datacard on Ubuntu?

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Are there any tools to check data usage of USB datacard on Linux? The way can be done on Windows, is it possible on Linux also?

usb

2 Answers

  1. Use vnstat

    sudo apt-get install vnstat

    Then first check which Interfaces are available through

    vnstat --iflist

    Available interfaces: lo eth0 , the eth0 for Wired connection, yours will be different (wlan0 i guess)

    Then run 

    vnstat

    It will be something like this 

     eth0 since 05/23/12

          rx:  20.66 GiB      tx:  5.35 GiB      total:  26.01 GiB

   monthly
                     rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
       Jun '12      9.18 GiB |    2.28 GiB |   11.47 GiB |   37.11 kbit/s
       Jul '12      6.35 GiB |    1.48 GiB |    7.83 GiB |   47.50 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated     12.30 GiB |    2.87 GiB |   15.16 GiB |

   daily
                     rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     yesterday    241.20 MiB |  122.44 MiB |  363.64 MiB |   34.48 kbit/s
         today        81 KiB |      54 KiB |     135 KiB |    3.22 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated        --     |      --     |      --     |

    You can use vnstat accordingly , 

     vnstat -s   << -s for short output mode

                      rx      /      tx      /     total    /   estimated
 eth0:
       Jun '12      9.18 GiB  /    2.28 GiB  /   11.47 GiB
       Jul '12      6.35 GiB  /    1.48 GiB  /    7.83 GiB  /   15.17 GiB
     yesterday    241.20 MiB  /  122.44 MiB  /  363.64 MiB
         today        35 KiB  /      14 KiB  /      49 KiB  /      --

    Similarly vnstat -d for daily basis record ,vnstat -h for hourly basis and you can refer other usage through the Vnstat Manpage .

    Another Web Browser based utility is NTOP

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  2. vnstat is probably the best way to do this. It can be installed using the following command in terminal:
    sudo apt-get install vnstat
    If you don't want to keep checking the data usage status every time then use:
    watch -n 5 --differences vnstat -d eth0
    It would display the status every 5 seconds in the open terminal with the differences that occur in the values. -d is used to display the status of each day and eth0 is the ethernet used for internet connection (wlan0 may be used for WiFi and ppp0 for a USB datacard).

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