Relative Network Bandwidth

[Stjepan Brbot]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-monitor

At the moment GNOME System Monitor always shows network traffic relative to maximum traffic achieved in particular time window. I'd like to be able to insert in System Monitor my max network speed and System Monitor to show my traffic according to it. E.g. I have 4Mbps (400KBps) link and I'd like to see how much (what bandwidth) of it I currently use. System Monitor does not show it at the moment. If I recently had 100KBps as maximal network speed, it uses this speed as upper limit and shows all other measurements relative to (below) it. Seems to me not very useful.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at:
 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626738

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

I don't think it's possible to find the internet connection bandwidth, so showing the bandwidth relative to the maximum value measured so far seems the best solution. We could use the bandwidth of the network card and display values relative to that, but network cards are usually 100Mb/s or 1000Gb/s, and the internet speed is usually lower, and in case of 1000Gb/s cards, the internet usage would be almost 0% of the 1000Gb, so it would not be really useful neither.

So maybe storing the maximum speed used so far would help a bit, and showing everything relative to that. So each time your network load is higher then a current maximum stored, the maximum would get saved, so after you have fully used your 4Mbps bandwidth for the first time you would get the behavior you requested. What do you think?

[Stjepan Brbot (stjepan-brbot)]

Maybe we do not understand each other. For example, I bought 4Mbps connection from my ISP. I'd like to be able to define my maximum speed (4Mbps) and to see in system monitor the current speed compared to that defined maximum speed (not to the maximum I had in previous time frame since it is changing with every time frame). System monitor does not have to find out what is my max speed, it should allow me to define it in settings as my maximum speed.