Traffic Usage Monitor (pre-alpha/proof-of-concept state)

tfstat is meant to overcome some of the shortcomings of current UNIX-based traffic monitors. tfstat continuously stores data (at specified intervals) such that a user can recall historical network bandwidth usage.

Currently tfstat is in a pre-alpha phase. It has the basic functionality to work on Linux, however lacks the ability to grab traffic data on bsd-based systems. Furthermore, most command line inputs are ignored and the program simply runs per the specified values in src/defaults.hpp.

For these reasons, I do not reccommend using tfstat in its current state beyond testing functionality. The code requires the user to rewrite/recompile the src/tfstat.cpp file in order to test the traffic monitoring functionality. There is a large block of code commented out in the main function which can be uncommented for testing.

tfstat uses a database-type method of storing historical data. When an interface's network stats are being saved, tfstat generates both a database file and a table file. The database file is never loaded into memory in full because it may cause issues depending on the size. While the table file is only about 50% smaller, it is easier to manage in memory.

In the future, I plan to make tfstat a functioning traffic monitoring package such that a user can have it run indefinitely in the background and recall traffic usage statistics for any period in time. By default, tfstat saves network statistics in 5 minute intervals. Given the 40-byte data structure being saved, if tfstat were left running for 5 years, the database file would only reach about 21MB of disk usage. There will be an option to overwrite old database entries beyond a specified period.