Dial up transfer rates: ugly hack #1 ;-)

Peter Garrett peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au
Sun Aug 28 23:56:14 UTC 2005


On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:26:25 +0930
squareyes <squareyes at optusnet.com.au> wrote:


> Hi Cybe,
> phone line is no where near the power cable, I live alone, and all my
>  children (3 dogs and 2 cats) have been expressly forbidden to watch
> TV after 5.00pm, so nothing is switched on that doesn't run in the 
> morning. :-)
> The feeling that it is an exchange problem grows stronger, that's why I 
> would like to
> present some evidence to my ISP, who still thinks that it is Linux.
> Thanks all who helped
> Take Care
> Winton
> 
Hi Winton,

This way of doing things is "Too Ugly to Live (tm)", but you can try it .

sudo apt-get install bwm  <---- tiny utility

bwm monitors your transfer rates... it takes some seconds to output anything, and uses ctrl-c to stop. If you do this:

start downloading  http://foo.bar.org/somebigfile  [substitute ad-lib]

then open a terminal and do

while true ; do bwm | grep ppp0 ; done

then leave that running for a while you get something like

while true ; do bwm | grep ppp0 ; done
        ppp0            4.287        3.654           7.941
        ppp0            5.906        1.110           7.016
        ppp0            4.436        0.183           4.619

<snipped>

bwm outputs in batches of ten lines or so, every twenty seconds, from memory.  To stop it just do a "ctrl-c". Easiest way to record it is to copy paste to gedit or your editor of choice and save. If you want to get fancy you can paste the top line of the standard bwm at the top of the file before doing this... (running bwm without arguments outputs a nice little updated table with labels for each interface)

Thus:

       Iface        RX(KB/sec)   TX(KB/sec)   Total(KB/sec)  <--- top line of standard bwm output
        ppp0            4.287        3.654           7.941              <---- first line of "while true .... etc"
        ppp0            5.906        1.110           7.016
        ppp0            4.436        0.183           4.619

... but of course you will wait to get a decent number of lines of output - to impress the optusnet people ;) So wait a while and let the "while true... " run...

See how you go...

Peter - hoping the bash experts will step in and demonstrate how this is done elegantly ;-)

-- 
Linux User #343161
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20050829/6250bae6/attachment.sig>


More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list