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IFTOP(8) System Manager's Manual IFTOP(8)
NAME
iftop - display bandwidth usage on an interface by host
SYNOPSIS
iftop -h | [-nNpblBP] [-i interface] [-f filter code] [-F net/mask] [-G net6/mask6]
DESCRIPTION
iftop listens to network traffic on a named interface, or on the first interface it can
find which looks like an external interface if none is specified, and displays a table of
current bandwidth usage by pairs of hosts. iftop must be run with sufficient permissions
to monitor all network traffic on the interface; see pcap(3) for more information, but on
most systems this means that it must be run as root.
By default, iftop will look up the hostnames associated with addresses it finds in pack-
ets. This can cause substantial traffic of itself, and may result in a confusing display.
You may wish to suppress display of DNS traffic by using filter code such as not port do-
main, or switch it off entirely, by using the -n option or by pressing r when the program
is running.
By default, iftop counts all IP packets that pass through the filter, and the direction of
the packet is determined according to the direction the packet is moving across the inter-
face. Using the -F option it is possible to get iftop to show packets entering and leav-
ing a given network. For example, iftop -F 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 will analyse packets flow-
ing in and out of the 10.* network.
Some other filter ideas:
not ether host ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
Ignore ethernet broadcast packets.
port http and not host webcache.example.com
Count web traffic only, unless it is being directed through a local web cache.
icmp How much bandwidth are users wasting trying to figure out why the network is slow?
OPTIONS
-h Print a summary of usage.
-n Don't do hostname lookups.
-N Do not resolve port number to service names
-p Run in promiscuous mode, so that traffic which does not pass directly through the
specified interface is also counted.
-P Turn on port display.
-l Display and count datagrams addressed to or from link-local IPv6 addresses. The
default is not to display that address category.
-b Don't display bar graphs of traffic.
-m limit
Set the upper limit for the bandwidth scale. Specified as a number with a 'K', 'M'
or 'G' suffix.
-B Display bandwidth rates in bytes/sec rather than bits/sec.
-i interface
Listen to packets on interface.
-f filter code
Use filter code to select the packets to count. Only IP packets are ever counted,
so the specified code is evaluated as (filter code) and ip.
-F net/mask
Specifies an IPv4 network for traffic analysis. If specified, iftop will only in-
clude packets flowing in to or out of the given network, and packet direction is
determined relative to the network boundary, rather than to the interface. You may
specify mask as a dotted quad, such as /255.255.255.0, or as a single number speci-
fying the number of bits set in the netmask, such as /24.
-G net6/mask6
Specifies an IPv6 network for traffic analysis. The value of mask6 can be given as
a prefix length or as a numerical address string for more compound bitmasking.
-c config file
Specifies an alternate config file. If not specified, iftop will use ~/.iftoprc if
it exists. See below for a description of config files
-t text output mode
Use text interface without ncurses and print the output to STDOUT.
DISPLAY
When running, iftop uses the whole screen to display network usage. At the top of the dis-
play is a logarithmic scale for the bar graph which gives a visual indication of traffic.
The main part of the display lists, for each pair of hosts, the rate at which data has
been sent and received over the preceding 2, 10 and 40 second intervals. The direction of
data flow is indicated by arrows, <= and =>. For instance,
foo.example.com => bar.example.com 1Kb 500b 100b
<= 2Mb 2Mb 2Mb
shows, on the first line, traffic from foo.example.com to bar.example.com; in the preced-
ing 2 seconds, this averaged 1Kbit/s, around half that amount over the preceding 10s, and
a fifth of that over the whole of the last 40s. During each of those intervals, the data
sent in the other direction was about 2Mbit/s. On the actual display, part of each line is
inverted to give a visual indication of the 10s average of traffic. You might expect to
see something like this where host foo is making repeated HTTP requests to bar, which is
sending data back which saturates a 2Mbit/s link.
By default, the pairs of hosts responsible for the most traffic (10 second average) are
displayed at the top of the list.
At the bottom of the display, various totals are shown, including peak traffic over the
last 40s, total traffic transferred (after filtering), and total transfer rates averaged
over 2s, 10s and 40s.
SOURCE / DEST AGGREGATION
By pressing s or d while iftop is running, all traffic for each source or destination will
be aggregated together. This is most useful when iftop is run in promiscuous mode, or is
run on a gateway machine.
PORT DISPLAY
S or D toggle the display of source and destination ports respectively. p will toggle port
display on/off.
DISPLAY TYPE
t cycles through the four line display modes; the default 2-line display, with sent and
received traffic on separate lines, and 3 1-line displays, with sent, received, or total
traffic shown.
DISPLAY ORDER
By default, the display is ordered according to the 10s average (2nd column). By pressing
1, 2 or 3 it is possible to sort by the 1st, 2nd or 3rd column. By pressing < or > the
display will be sorted by source or destination hostname respectively.
DISPLAY FILTERING
l allows you to enter a POSIX extended regular expression that will be used to filter
hostnames shown in the display. This is a good way to quickly limit what is shown on the
display. Note that this happens at a much later stage than filter code, and does not af-
fect what is actually captured. Display filters DO NOT affect the totals at the bottom of
the screen.
PAUSE DISPLAY / FREEZE ORDER
P will pause the current display.
o will freeze the current screen order. This has the side effect that traffic between
hosts not shown on the screen at the time will not be shown at all, although it will be
included in the totals at the bottom of the screen.
SCROLL DISPLAY
j and k will scroll the display of hosts. This feature is most useful when the display
order is frozen (see above).
FILTER CODE
f allows you to edit the filter code whilst iftop running. This can lead to some unex-
pected behaviour.
CONFIG FILE
iftop can read its configuration from a config file. If the -c option is not specified,
iftop will attempt to read its configuration from ~/.iftoprc, if it exists. Any command
line options specified will override settings in the config file.
The config file consists of one configuration directive per line. Each directive is a
name value pair, for example:
interface: eth0
sets the network interface. The following config directives are supported:
interface: if
Sets the network interface to if.
dns-resolution: (yes|no)
Controls reverse lookup of IP addresses.
port-resolution: (yes|no)
Controls conversion of port numbers to service names.
filter-code: bpf
Sets the filter code to bpf.
show-bars: (yes|no)
Controls display of bar graphs.
promiscuous: (yes|no)
Puts the interface into promiscuous mode.
port-display: (off|source-only|destination-only|on)
Controls display of port numbers.
link-local: (yes|no)
Determines displaying of link-local IPv6 addresses.
hide-source: (yes|no)
Hides source host names.
hide-destination: (yes|no)
Hides destination host names.
use-bytes: (yes|no)
Use bytes for bandwidth display, rather than bits.
sort: (2s|10s|40s|source|destination)
Sets which column is used to sort the display.
line-display: (two-line|one-line-both|one-line-sent|one-line-received)
Controls the appearance of each item in the display.
show-totals: (yes|no)
Shows cumulative total for each item.
log-scale: (yes|no)
Use a logarithmic scale for bar graphs.
max-bandwidth: bw
Fixes the maximum for the bar graph scale to bw, e.g. "10M". Note that the value
has to always be in bits, regardless if the option to display in bytes has been
chosen.
net-filter: net/mask
Defines an IP network boundary for determining packet direction.
net-filter6: net6/mask6
Defines an IPv6 network boundary for determining packet direction.
screen-filter: regexp
Sets a regular expression to filter screen output.
QUIRKS (aka they're features, not bugs)
There are some circumstances in which iftop may not do what you expect. In most cases
what it is doing is logical, and we believe it is correct behaviour, although I'm happy to
hear reasoned arguments for alternative behaviour.
Totals don't add up
There are several reasons why the totals may not appear to add up. The most obvious is
having a screen filter in effect, or screen ordering frozen. In this case some captured
information is not being shown to you, but is included in the totals.
A more subtle explanation comes about when running in promiscuous mode without specifying
a -F option. In this case there is no easy way to assign the direction of traffic between
two third parties. For the purposes of the main display this is done in an arbitrary
fashion (by ordering of IP addresses), but for the sake of totals all traffic between
other hosts is accounted as incoming, because that's what it is from the point of view of
your interface. The -F option allows you to specify an arbitrary network boundary, and to
show traffic flowing across it.
Peak totals don't add up
Again, this is a feature. The peak sent and peak received didn't necessarily happen at
the same time. The peak total is the maximum of sent plus received in each captured time
division.
Changing the filter code doesn't seem to work
Give it time. Changing the filter code affects what is captured from the time that you
entered it, but most of what is on the display is based on some fraction of the last 40s
window of capturing. After changing the filter there may be entries on the display that
are disallowed by the current filter for up to 40s. DISPLAY FILTERING has immediate ef-
fect and does not affect what is captured.
FILES
~/.iftoprc
Configuration file for iftop.
SEE ALSO
tcpdump(8), pcap(3), driftnet(1).
AUTHOR
Paul Warren <pdw AT ex-parrot.com>
VERSION
$Id: iftop.8,v 1.31 2014/01/05 17:22:39 pdw Exp $
COPYING
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either ver-
sion 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Bos-
ton, MA 02110-1301 USA.
IFTOP(8)
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On Apache
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