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How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth?

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  How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? laredotornado@zipmail.com - 2014-01-09 19:52 -0800
    Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Alan Baker <alangbaker@telus.net> - 2014-01-09 20:06 -0800
    Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2014-01-10 05:17 +0000
      Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2014-01-10 09:40 +0000
    Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Patty Winter <patty1@wintertime.com> - 2014-01-10 17:04 +0000
    Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? laredotornado@zipmail.com - 2014-01-10 09:37 -0800
      Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Michael Vilain <vilain@NOspamcop.net> - 2014-01-10 10:42 -0800
        Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Ted Lee <tmplee@gmail.com> - 2014-01-10 13:29 -0600
          Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? J Burns <burns4@nowhere.com> - 2014-01-10 16:44 -0500
          Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Michael Vilain <vilain@NOspamcop.net> - 2014-01-11 16:47 -0800
            Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? Alan Baker <alangbaker@telus.net> - 2014-01-11 18:18 -0800
    Re: How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth? MeV <michael.vilain@gmail.com> - 2014-01-13 00:26 -0800

#54547 — How can I figure out what processes are consuming my upload bandwidth?

Hi,

I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.

I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate statistics.

Thanks, - Dave

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#54548

On 2014-01-10 03:52:05 +0000, laredotornado@zipmail.com said:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what 
> processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and 
> if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always 
> preferred.
> 
> I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate 
> statistics.
> 
> Thanks, - Dave

<http://www.ntop.org/>

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#54549

On 2014-01-10, laredotornado@zipmail.com <laredotornado@zipmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.
>
> I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate statistics.

The built-in 'nettop' command-line tool will show you what you want. Try
this:

1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.
2. Enter the command: nettop -m tcp
3. Press the up/down arrow keys to scroll up and down the listing. 

The "bytes in/out" columns show how much data is being transferred
to/from each application in the list. Read the manual page for nettop
(command: man nettop) for more information about the tool.

For a more friendly / easy method, iStat Menus will show you the
applications currently using network bandwidth on your Mac. Here's a
screenshot showing a Safari tab that is displaying a network camera
video stream on my MacBook Pro, as an example:

<http://s14.postimg.org/b3hlvxm4x/istat.png>

Get iStat Menus here: <http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/>

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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#54555

In message <bj9e2fF7b6iU1@mid.individual.net> 
  Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
> On 2014-01-10, laredotornado@zipmail.com <laredotornado@zipmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.
>>
>> I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate statistics.

> The built-in 'nettop' command-line tool will show you what you want. Try
> this:

The trouble with nettop is that it doesn't behave like top and let you
sort the list. It would be 100x more useful if you could sort by bytes
in/out, especially in delta mode.

> For a more friendly / easy method, iStat Menus will show you the
> applications currently using network bandwidth on your Mac. Here's a
> screenshot showing a Safari tab that is displaying a network camera
> video stream on my MacBook Pro, as an example:

> <http://s14.postimg.org/b3hlvxm4x/istat.png>

> Get iStat Menus here: <http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/>

That is a nice feature of iStat menu, but not enough for me to give it
space on my menu bar as these are the sorts of things I care about only
when there's an issue, which is not often.

-- 
Lister: What d'ya think of Betty? Cat: Betty Rubble? Well, I would go
with Betty... but I'd be thinking of Wilma. Lister: This is crazy. Why
are we talking about going to bed with Wilma Flintstone? Cat: You're
right. We're nuts. This is an insane conversation. Lister: She'll never
leave Fred, and we know it.

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#54557

In article <28b0e489-8992-4e45-9349-8d091bdb94ca@googlegroups.com>,
 <laredotornado@zipmail.com> wrote:
>
>I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what
>processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and
>if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always
>preferred.
>
>I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate
>statistics.

What do you mean by "aggregate"? It shows each application separately,
and even plug-ins (for some reason, the Flash plug-in in Firefox is
at the top of the list right now, even though FF isn't on a page with
video). You can get details on any given process.

The free iStat widget also shows the top processes, but since Activity
Monitor comes with Macs, it seems like the easiest solution.


Patty

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#54558

On Thursday, January 9, 2014 9:52:05 PM UTC-6, laredo...@zipmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> 
> I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.
> 
> 
> 
> I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate statistics.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks, - Dave

By "aggregate," I mean when I click on the "Network" tab at the bottom of activity monitor there are "packets out" and "packets out/sec" lines but they aren't particular to processes.  The process list, at the top, only has "process Name", "User," "% CPU," "Threads," "REal Mem," and "Kind" columns.  Maybe there's another way to configure activity monitor, but that's what I see.

Thanks for all the other answers, - Dave

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#54559

In article <637b1576-06f8-4d93-857d-b632ab65b734@googlegroups.com>,
 laredotornado@zipmail.com wrote:

> On Thursday, January 9, 2014 9:52:05 PM UTC-6, laredo...@zipmail.com wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications 
> > are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that 
> > is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate 
> > statistics.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks, - Dave
> 
> By "aggregate," I mean when I click on the "Network" tab at the bottom of 
> activity monitor there are "packets out" and "packets out/sec" lines but they 
> aren't particular to processes.  The process list, at the top, only has 
> "process Name", "User," "% CPU," "Threads," "REal Mem," and "Kind" columns.  
> Maybe there's another way to configure activity monitor, but that's what I 
> see.
> 
> Thanks for all the other answers, - Dave

I think the problem with answering "What process(s) are taking up my 
bandwidth?" is that the network I/O is monitored in netstat and nettop 
but I haven't found a GUI tool that displays it. You can monitor all the 
traffic on an interface with stuff like mTrafficStats but not process by 
process.

Typically the need to drill down to "what process" happens infrequently, 
so no one write or designed a program to collect and display that 
information.  Once you answer that question, you'll probably won't need 
that tool again.  In contrast, mTrafficStat shows the collected traffic 
on an interface for a specific time period.  That's useful to answer the 
question "Am I getting near my network bandwidth cap for the month?"

Unless you can code and have a couple months to write your tool, you're 
stuck with command line tools.

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

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#54560

On 1/10/14, 12:42 PM, Michael Vilain wrote:
> Unless you can code and have a couple months to write your tool, you're
> stuck with command line tools.


Not entirely true.  Activity monitor does (can) show the number of 
bytes/packets sent/received for each process.  True, it doesn't give the 
rate (bytes/packets per second) but you ought to be able to eyeball 
compute that.  It looks like it starts counting from when a process is 
created, so you'd have to logout/login to reset all the counters for all 
user processes to zero.  I suppose if you do a restart that will reset 
the counters for any system processes that aren't associated with a user.

-- 
Ted

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#54564

On 1/10/14, 2:29 PM, Ted Lee wrote:
> On 1/10/14, 12:42 PM, Michael Vilain wrote:
>> Unless you can code and have a couple months to write your tool, you're
>> stuck with command line tools.
>
>
> Not entirely true.  Activity monitor does (can) show the number of
> bytes/packets sent/received for each process.  True, it doesn't give the
> rate (bytes/packets per second) but you ought to be able to eyeball
> compute that.  It looks like it starts counting from when a process is
> created, so you'd have to logout/login to reset all the counters for all
> user processes to zero.  I suppose if you do a restart that will reset
> the counters for any system processes that aren't associated with a user.
>
I like that! So far I haven't had trouble with unidentified traffic, but 
I'm looking forward to trying it.

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#54594

In article <laphn8$nqf$2@dont-email.me>, Ted Lee <tmplee@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> On 1/10/14, 12:42 PM, Michael Vilain wrote:
> > Unless you can code and have a couple months to write your tool, you're
> > stuck with command line tools.
> 
> 
> Not entirely true.  Activity monitor does (can) show the number of 
> bytes/packets sent/received for each process.  True, it doesn't give the 
> rate (bytes/packets per second) but you ought to be able to eyeball 
> compute that.  It looks like it starts counting from when a process is 
> created, so you'd have to logout/login to reset all the counters for all 
> user processes to zero.  I suppose if you do a restart that will reset 
> the counters for any system processes that aren't associated with a user.

Activity Monitor is probably using the same counters that netstat and 
nettop use.  They aren't historical in that if you quit a process like 
Safari then restart it, the traffic counters for that connection will 
end.  I don't even think sar accounting will track network traffic 
except on a per interface basis.

I stand corrected. When I looked at Activity Monitor's per-process 
output, it didn't have per process network I/O.

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

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#54601

On 2014-01-12 00:47:55 +0000, Michael Vilain said:

> In article <laphn8$nqf$2@dont-email.me>, Ted Lee <tmplee@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 1/10/14, 12:42 PM, Michael Vilain wrote:
>>> Unless you can code and have a couple months to write your tool, you're
>>> stuck with command line tools.
>> 
>> 
>> Not entirely true.  Activity monitor does (can) show the number of
>> bytes/packets sent/received for each process.  True, it doesn't give the
>> rate (bytes/packets per second) but you ought to be able to eyeball
>> compute that.  It looks like it starts counting from when a process is
>> created, so you'd have to logout/login to reset all the counters for all
>> user processes to zero.  I suppose if you do a restart that will reset
>> the counters for any system processes that aren't associated with a user.
> 
> Activity Monitor is probably using the same counters that netstat and
> nettop use.  They aren't historical in that if you quit a process like
> Safari then restart it, the traffic counters for that connection will
> end.  I don't even think sar accounting will track network traffic
> except on a per interface basis.
> 
> I stand corrected. When I looked at Activity Monitor's per-process
> output, it didn't have per process network I/O.

Prior to Mavericks, I don't think that Activity Monitor had per process 
network I/O data, but Mavericks most definitely has it.

You might want to check what columns you can add to the display on 
prior versions of Mac OS X. Right-click on the column heading area and 
you'll get a menu showing all the columns both currently selected and 
available.

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#54695

On Thursday, January 9, 2014 7:52:05 PM UTC-8, laredo...@zipmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm using Mac 10.7.5.  I'm trying to figure out what processes/applications are consuming my available upload bandwidth and if possible, know what that is in kbps.  Free tools are always preferred.
> 
> I have looked at the Activity Monitor, but seems to only give aggregate statistics.
> 
> Thanks, - Dave

I just stumbled across the network monitor display of Little Snitch. I have that installed and use it as an application firewall but didn't really look much at the network display.  It has the per-process metrics you're looking for. It will show what processes are using the bandwidth at any one moment so you can zoom in on who's being the bandwidth hog.  It won't however do historical or store this information.  It may be what you need in the short term to answer your question.

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