{"id":206822,"date":"2026-01-26T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T03:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/26\/the-only-linux-command-you-need-for-monitoring-network-traffic-and-how-to-use-it\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T00:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T05:20:10","slug":"the-only-linux-command-you-need-for-monitoring-network-traffic-and-how-to-use-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/26\/the-only-linux-command-you-need-for-monitoring-network-traffic-and-how-to-use-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The only Linux command you need for monitoring network traffic &#8211; and how to use it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/monitor-network-traffic-iftop-command-linux\/\">The only Linux command you need for monitoring network traffic &#8211; and how to use it<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/monitor-network-traffic-iftop-command-linux\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/monitor-network-traffic-iftop-command-linux\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-01-26 22:01:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Marcus Millo\/iStock\/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>There are several ways to monitor network traffic on Linux.<\/li>\n<li>You should regularly check on incoming and outgoing traffic.<\/li>\n<li>One of the best tools for this is iftop.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Once you dive down the rabbit hole of possible commands for this task, you could become overwhelmed with choices &#8212; and with the complexity of some of those commands.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0The first 8 Linux commands every new user should learn<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I wanted to find an easier way to check network traffic, and it didn&#8217;t take long to find what I was looking for.<\/p>\n<p>The tool I\u00a0used\u00a0to use for this is Wireshark, but I&#8217;ve found it&#8217;s been a bit cumbersome over the years. Also, getting the Flatpak version of Wireshark working properly is a PITA.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Why use something complex when something simple will do?<\/p>\n<p>The best solution I found is the iftop command. According to the iftop man page, &#8220;iftop &#8211; display bandwidth usage on an interface by host.&#8221; 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The table iftop presents displays incoming and outgoing traffic in a way that&#8217;s easy to discern.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: The 6 Linux distros I expect to rule 2026 &#8211; as someone who&#8217;s tested hundreds of them<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iftop is also flexible, with several important options. However, you don&#8217;t have to get bogged down in options, as I&#8217;ve found that only one is necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Let me show you how this is done.<\/p>\n<h2>Installing iftop<\/h2>\n<p><strong>What you&#8217;ll need:\u00a0<\/strong>Iftop can be installed from the standard repositories of most Linux distributions, so all you&#8217;ll need is your Linux distro of choice and a user with sudo access.<\/p>\n<p>First, open your default terminal app from&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/monitor-network-traffic-iftop-command-linux\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only Linux command you need for monitoring network traffic &#8211; and how to use&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/28f01290b4c0e8d635bc6ac133f7cbb92a10643b\/2026\/01\/26\/bfd8f57a-7e1b-4b4d-a5ce-b2e70031b00e\/ainternetcable-gettyimages-1209789500.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-206822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206824,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206822\/revisions\/206824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}