There are a lot of reasons why systems slow down. Some process might be bogging down the CPU, you may be seeing a lot of disk contention, or maybe memory is in high demand and a lot of swapping is going on. Then again, the system may be slowed down because of network bandwidth contention. Like a busy door with too many people wanting to enter and exit at the same time, a system’s network connection can represent a serious limiting factor in how well it performs. That said, if you’re looking for good, real-time insights on how a system is using its network bandwidth — in particular which processes may be using far more than their fair share — you’re going to have a hard time beating nethogs.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here