The only Linux command you need for monitoring network traffic - and how to use it

"Linux has a tool for everything. Sometimes those tools come in the form of an easy-to-use GUI, and other times a command is necessary. For monitoring network traffic, your best bet is the command line. Once you dive down the rabbit hole of possible commands for this task, you could become overwhelmed with choices -- and with the complexity of some of those commands."

"Why use something complex when something simple will do? The best solution I found is the iftop command. According to the iftop man page, "iftop - display bandwidth usage on an interface by host." The iftop command listens to network traffic on a specific network interface (or the first interface it finds) and displays an easy-to-read table for bandwidth usage."

Linux offers both graphical and command-line tools for tasks, and network traffic monitoring is often best performed from the command line. Iftop displays bandwidth usage on a network interface by host and listens to traffic on a specified interface or the first available one. Iftop presents an easy-to-read table showing incoming and outgoing traffic and provides flexible options while working well with a simple default usage. Iftop is lighter and less cumbersome than Wireshark for quick bandwidth checks. Iftop installs from standard distribution repositories and requires a user with sudo access to install.

Read at ZDNET