Animated sprites show network throughput
Programming Snapshot – Go Animation
© Lead Image © Saniphoto, Fotolia.com
Rather than using ho-hum bar graphs to display Internet bandwidth usage, Mike Schilli enlists cartoon characters to do the job. Along the way, you get a free introduction to 2D gaming sprite technology.
The measured value in bits per second for the data currently pouring through my Internet connection provides information on whether my home network is working well or whether someone in the household is currently using an excessive amount of bandwidth.
In a scenario where all of the data traffic flows through a central router such as my pfSense appliance, it is easy to average the bit count over several seconds, for example, using the genuinely helpful vnStat utility. To install the tool on my pfSense router as a normal package in typical FreeBSD style, I call
pkg install vnstat
[...]
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