Network Client

You'll want to run this puppy with some sort of automation like:
watch -n10 monitor-network.pl hostname.domain.com 10
or a better choice is to use a window manager dock monitoring program like "generic mon" in xfce4. You easily get something like this --->

The frequency number at the end just needs to match the frequency at which you are polling.


Here is the perl script
 #!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $tranunit= "B"; #default unit display is in Bytes
my $recunit= "B";  #default unit display is in Bytes
my ($host, $freq);
my (@lastresult, @result);

#Get Hostname and Frequency (how often you poll the server in seconds) from command line or interactive
if ($#ARGV+1) {
   $host = $ARGV[0];
   $freq = $ARGV[1];
} else {
   print "Please enter fully qualified hostname: ";
   $host = ;
   print "Please enter poll frequency (how often you are checking in seconds): ";
   $freq = ;
}
chomp($host);
chomp($freq);

#Get last results from temp file and current results from server
if (-s "/tmp/network.$host") {
   @lastresult = `cat /tmp/network.$host`;               #yes, this should be a hash, you fix it!
}else{
   @result = `nc $host 30003 |tee /tmp/network.$host`;   #oneday i'll perl-ize this into an extra 20 lines of code for compatiablity
   exit 0; #first run, no data yet
}
@result = `nc $host 30003 |tee /tmp/network.$host`;   #oneday i'll perl-ize this into an extra 20 lines of code for compatiablity

printf "eth: In / Out\n";    #header

my $i = 0; #this is an array index used by the 2 arrays below to keep them in sync
while ($result[$i]) {
   my ($dev, $rl, $tl) = split (":", $lastresult[$i], 3);
   my (undef, $r, $t) = split (":", $result[$i], 3);
   $dev =~ s/eth//ig;
   my $rec = ($r - $rl) / $freq;    #subtract last recieved from recieved and divide result by frequency of poll
   my $tran = ($t - $tl) / $freq;   #subtract last transmitted from transmitted and divide result by frequency of poll

#Find the best viewing scale, Bytes, Kbytes or Mbytes
   if ($rec > 1024) {
      $rec = $rec / 1024;
      $recunit = "K";
   }
	if (($recunit eq "K") && ($rec > 1024)) {
      $rec = $rec / 1024;
      $recunit = "M";
   }
   
   if ($tran > 1024) {
      $tran = $tran / 1024;
      $tranunit = "K";
   }
	if (($tranunit eq "K") && ($tran > 1024)) {
      $tran = $tran / 1024;
      $tranunit = "M";
   }

#format for pretty output and...output!
   $rec  = sprintf("%4.f",  $rec);
   $tran = sprintf("%4.f", $tran);
   print $dev, ":";
	print $rec, $recunit, " /";
	print $tran, $tranunit, "\n";

   $i++; #increment the dual-array index
}