Not working on x86 systems...

[Jean-François Gauthier]

On x86 systems, when there is higher than 4 gb of transfert, the 'bytes' counter in /proc/net/dev wraps after bytes > 2^32. So it constantly shows 0 Mbit/s of network activity. What is supposed to happen is to see something more than 0 Mbit/s when downloading from the server. This behavior happens on 12.04 x86 lts AND 14.04 x86 lts.

Possible solution :
"It is the program you use that should already be aware of this and should take care of this: it should poll twice and if the 2nd value is less than the 1st value add 4Gb to the 1st value. Subtracting the two will then show the correct result."
                                                                                    -Rinzwind on askubuntu.com

Thank you