nicstat was written by Brendan Gregg and Tim Cook of Sun Microsystems - originally for Solaris, ported to Linux.

The official, upstream repository for nicstat is at https://sourceforge.net/projects/nicstat/

This fork exists primarily to address some bugs in the upstream code. See BUGS.md for a list of fixed bugs.

The original, imported source is on the upstream_1.95 branch of this repository.

This fork has only been tested on Linux. Reasonable effort has been made that it hasn't been broken in Solaris, but it is possible. Please create a Github issue if any issues are found (or - even better - a pull request with a fix!). Thanks.

If any changes are made to the upstream source, I will merge them in in an attempt to keep this tree in sync with upstream.

Pull requests are welcome for any additional bugs or features as well.

nicstat is entirely the property of its originators. All rights, restrictions, limitations, warranties, etc remain per nicstat's owners and license.

nicstat is licensed under the Artistic License 2.0. You can find a copy of this license as LICENSE.txt included with the nicstat distribution, or at https://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0

Following is the full contents of README_upstream.md, which is README.md in the sourceforge file listing (but not part of the source tarball):

nicstat is a Solaris and Linux command-line that prints out network statistics for all network interface cards (NICs), including packets, kilobytes per second, average packet sizes and more.

It was developed by Tim Cook and Brendan Gregg, both formerly of Sun Microsystems.

• Added "-U" option, to display separate read and write utilization.

• Simplified display code regarding "-M" option.

• Fixed fetch64() to check type of kstats

• Fixed memory leak in update_nicdata_list()

• Added "-M" option to change throughput statistics to Mbps (Megabits per second). Suggestion from Darren Todd.

• Fixed bugs with printing extended parseable format (-xp)

• Fixed man page's description of extended parseable output.

• Fixed memory leak associated with g_getif_list

• Add 2nd argument to dladm_open() for Solaris 11.1

• Modify nicstat.sh to handle Solaris 11.1

• Modify nicstat.sh to see "x86_64" cputype as "i386". All Linux binaries are built as 32-bit, so we do not need to differentiate these two cpu types.

• nicstat.sh script, to provide for automated multi-platform deployment. See the Makefile's for details.

• Added "-x" flag, to display extended statistics for each interface.

• Added "-t" and "-u" flags, to include TCP and UDP (respectively) statistics. These come from tcp:0:tcpstat and udp:0:udpstat on Solaris, or from /proc/net/snmp and /proc/net/netstat on Linux.

• Added "-a" flag, which equates to "-tux".

• Added "-l" flag, which lists interfaces and their configuration.

• Added "-v" flag, which displays nicstat version.

• Added use of libdladm.so:dladm_walk_datalink_id() to get list of interfaces. This is better than SIOCGLIFCONF, as it includes interfaces given exclusively to a zone.
  NOTE: this library/routine can be linked in to nicstat in "lazy" mode, meaning that a Solaris 11 binary built with knowledge of the routine will also run on Solaris 10 without failing when the routine or library is not found - in this case nicstat will fall back to the SIOGLIFCONF method.

• Added search of kstat "link_state" statistics as a third method for finding active network interfaces. See the man page for details.

• Added support for SIOCETHTOOL ioctl, so that nicstat can look up interface speed/duplex (i.e. "-S" flag not necessarily needed any longer).

• Removed need for LLONG_MAX, improving Linux portability.

Following is the full contents of README.txt:

nicstat 1.95 README
===================

nicstat is licensed under the Artistic License 2.0.  You can find a
copy of this license as LICENSE.txt included with the nicstat
distribution, or at https://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0


AUTHORS
    [email protected] (formerly [email protected]), Brendan Gregg
    (formerly [email protected])

HOW TO BUILD ON SOLARIS
    mv Makefile.Solaris Makefile
    make

HOW TO BUILD ON LINUX
    mv Makefile.Linux Makefile
    make

HOW TO INSTALL
    make [BASEDIR=<dir>] install

    Default BASEDIR is /usr/local

HOW TO INSTALL A MULTI-PLATFORM SET OF BINARIES
        1. (Optional) Change BASEDIR, BINDIR and/or MP_DIR in Makefile
    2. make install_multi_platform
    3. (Optional) add links or binaries for your platform(s)

HOME PAGE
    https://blogs.oracle.com/timc/entry/nicstat_the_solaris_and_linux