Displaying bandwidth usage with Go
Programming Snapshot – Go Bandwidth Display
© Lead Image © xyzproject, 123RF.com
A Go program running on a Raspberry Pi grabs metrics from a pfSense firewall and displays them on a miniature display to help Mike Schilli keep an eye on his Internet connection's bandwidth usage.
Measuring the active throughput of an Internet connection is not entirely trivial, because nobody wants the measuring probe to slow down the data traffic. However, the router at the Internet access point has to view and forward all of the packets anyway, so why not let it also count them and provide the results via an API?
At home, I use a pfSense firewall on a fanless mini PC as my main router, which also runs some apps with access to the packet throughput (Figure 1). One of these apps is ntopng, which shows you in a browser which LAN client is currently communicating with which server on the Internet – among other things. Ntopng also offers an API with token authentication, which returns counters for the bits transferred in both directions.
I didn't want to rely on the tool just running on demand in a web browser, but on a separate Raspberry Pi, which I equipped with a $50 color display for continuous viewing pleasure (Figure 2). When I'm sitting at my desk, I can see out of the corner of my eye the number of bits zooming in or out every second. As a side effect, I can also see at a glance what's going on when someone shouts "the Internet is down again" from the other room.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.