I’ve been on a major self improvement kick lately. I’ve kicked several crazy habits including, but not limited to:

• Smoking
• Biting my nails
• Soda
• Sugar (practicing moderation)

Next on my self improvement quest, I decided to start monitoring bandwidth usage and tracking it on my blog so I(and you!) can follow how much I’m using, and try to trim it down to a reasonable level. I’m not going to play around, I am seriously addicted to the internet. It is one of my oldest, hardest to moderate addictions EVER. I figured if I kept track of how much I actually use on a daily basis that it would help me moderate myself.

So, this morning I downloaded and installed vnstat and initialized the database for my single interface like so:

sudo vnstat -u -i eth0

Where eth0 is the interface all my network traffic routes through. To track multiple interfaces, run the above command again, swapping out eth0 for the other interface.

Next I fired up the following cron:

*/5 * * * * if [ -x /usr/bin/vnstat ] && [ `ls /var/lib/vnstat/ | wc -l` -ge 1 ]; then /usr/bin/vnstat -u; fi

It samples usage on any interface you specify every 5 minutes and creates awesome statistics from it. So, whenever I have a quick break between tasks, I run vnstat and get a glimpse at my usage.

Now, this is the part that scared me a bit.. I never really thought about how much I use. I fired all of this up at ~9:00AM, the snapshot below was taken at 10:45AM.

bsmith@bsmith-desktop [10:47:06 (0.17)] ~ 
-> vnstat
Database updated: Tue Jan 26 10:45:01 2010

    eth0

       received:      40.68 MB (81.6%)
    transmitted:       9.89 MB (18.4%)
          total:      50.57 MB

                    rx     |     tx     |  total
    -----------------------+------------+-----------
        today     40.68 MB |    9.89 MB |   50.57 MB
    -----------------------+------------+-----------
    estimated        89 MB |      20 MB |     109 MB

I, um, yeah I use the internet, a lot..

There are lots of other fun things you can do with vnstat, but I’ll mainly just look at incremental snapshots, and the money shot: daily usage.

Daily output looks like this:

bsmith@bsmith-desktop [10:47:41 (0.09)] ~ 
-> vnstat -d

eth0  /  daily

day         rx      |     tx      |  total
------------------------+-------------+----------------------------------------
26.01.     42.19 MB  |   10.35 MB  |   52.53 MB   %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%:::::
------------------------+-------------+----------------------------------------
estimated       92 MB  |      22 MB  |     114 MB

As said previously, I’m going to post my bandwidth usage daily, either here, or on my Posterous for the next month. I don’t really have a goal here, just want to be able to trim my usage to hopefully stave off some of my internet “dependency” issues..

Stay Tuned!

Don’t remember how, but I ran across the “explicit vs implicit self” argument again while lurking on the internet. I realize this is an old argument, but it sparked up my thought machine and I wanted to share my opinion for the hell of it, dead horse be damned.

To me it’s like a noise your car makes that you never notice because it’s made it for so long. However, when other people ride in your car with you, they point it out. You quickly brush it off with “oh, it’s always done that, doesn’t really bother me.”. Like a crotchety old man, I like things the way they are and aint a damn thing you’re gonna do to change my mind!

Every single language has one(or more!) of those “car noises”. Suck it up and be practical, hippies, and get off my lawn!

Ok, I’m done :)