How to track the total data transfered in a month

Question

I can see the data transferred (internet Download/Upload) in the current session from the System Monitor. But I want something that keeps track of all the data transferred and I can see how much data was used in a month or two. Preferably a GUI tool.

Answer 1

If you like a nice GUI try NTM - Network Traffic Monitor. It's not in the repos but you can easily download a deb package from their website: http://netramon.sourceforge.net/eng/index.html

Should work for all *buntu variants.

Features: Choice of the interface to monitoring. Period to monitoring: Day, Week, Month, Year or Custom Days. With autoupdate. Threshold: Autodisconnection if a limit is reached (by NetworkManager). Traffic Monitoring: Inbound, outbount and total traffic; Show the traffic speed. Time Monitoring: Total time of connections in the period. Time Slot Monitoring: Number of sessions used. Reports: Show of average values and daily traffic of a configurable period. Online checking with NetworkManager or by "Ping Mode". The traffic is attributed to the day when the session began. Not need root privilege. Not invasive, use a system try icon.

Answer 2

Install vnstat

sudo apt-get install vnstat

Now you want to configure your interface

sudo vnstat -u -i <interface>

i.e sudo vnstat -u -i eth0

Now to see the usage type vnstat in terminal

vnstat

Output:

karthick@Ubuntu-desktop:~/Desktop$ vnstat
Database updated: Thu Dec  2 13:06:21 2010

   eth0 since 11/29/10

          rx:  624.84 MiB      tx:  285.97 MiB      total:  910.80 MiB

   monthly
                     rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
       Nov '10    412.00 MiB |  239.16 MiB |  651.16 MiB |    2.06 kbit/s
       Dec '10    212.83 MiB |   46.81 MiB |  259.64 MiB |   15.92 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated      4.15 GiB |     922 MiB |    5.05 GiB |

   daily
                     rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     yesterday    150.05 MiB |   30.82 MiB |  180.87 MiB |   17.15 kbit/s
         today     62.78 MiB |   15.99 MiB |   78.77 MiB |   13.68 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated       113 MiB |      27 MiB |     140 MiB |

Note:
To see the monthly status alone type vnstat -m to see the daily status type vnstat -d