Checking data usage in a mobile broadband connection in ubuntu

Question

I use a huawei dongle to access the Internet and since mobile partner doesn't support Ubuntu is there a way to check the data usage? any app maybe?

Install modem-manager-gui. It has same function as mobile partner. — g_p, Dec 11 '13 at 15:26
Possible duplicate of How to monitor my data limit on a mobile broadband connection? — David Foerster, Mar 31 '16 at 13:51

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

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 ppp0

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).

Sample output:

 ppp0  /  daily
         day         rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
      02/07/15     99.11 MiB |   11.10 MiB |  110.21 MiB |   10.45 kbit/s
      02/08/15     25.09 MiB |    3.75 MiB |   28.84 MiB |    5.37 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated        49 MiB |       5 MiB |      54 MiB |

NOTE: Type ifconfig in Terminal and see the output. The ppp thing followed by a number(could be ppp0) is your dongle. Use it with vnstat as explained above.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 31 '16 at 13:49

2

You can check it in every System Monitor (or Task Manager) like in this one from Gnome:

edited Mar 31 '16 at 13:49

David Foerster

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answered Dec 11 '13 at 15:27

dhpasta

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Thats a good thing... hidden behind and I was searching for here and there... Thank you buddy... – Anuj TBE Mar 02 '15 at 06:41

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 11 '13 at 15:48

0

You can choose between a GTK tool, NTM:

http://netramon.sourceforge.net/eng/index.html

And a more advanced command line tool, vnStat:

http://humdi.net/vnstat/

answered Dec 11 '13 at 15:48

Pavel

1,456

Checking data usage in a mobile broadband connection in ubuntu

3 Answers3

Sample output: