Re: Mobile broadband statistics

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 15:46 -0700, Jonathan Petersson wrote:
> If you look at /proc/net/dev once connected there's counters available
> showing how much data that has been transferred, I believe this
> counter will reset each time the interface is disconnected from your
> computer.
> 
> Your best choice is probably to write a script that counts the data
> from /proc/net/dev when connected and summarizes this.

NetworkManager actually emits D-Bus signals that show the total amount
of traffic used in a session at the PPP level, but nothing is currently
listening to it.

The plan had been to have the applet listen to NM signals of traffic,
and accumulate the totals in GConf for the connection until the user
manually reset the value through the connection editor, or until a
specific user-specified date passed.  Additionally, there would be some
sort of entry for a data limit, and the applet would warn you the closer
you got to that limit, maybe at 95%, 97%, and 99%, etc.

If anyone wants to do that patch, it's all in the applet (except for
'hso' devices which would need a bit of NM support but that's pretty
easy), and I'm happy to explain in more detail what to do.

Dan


> /Jonathan
> 
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Tim Hawkins <tim hawkins me com> wrote:
> > This would be a great feature, can i also request that you also consider pay
> > as you go subscriptions, which have a capped limit of both data and time, so
> > it would be great to have a counter start tool that could be used to count
> > time and usage. So users could access how much usage they have left before
> > needing to buy a top up.
> >
> > A manual period start mechanism that could be scheduled for contracts would
> > cover both requirements.
> >
> >
> > On 30 Apr 2009, at 22:14, Håvard Espeland wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I recently started using the mobile broadband feature of NM, and it
> >> works great. Unfortunately, I have a monthly upper threshold on my
> >> subscription, which I guess is pretty common. If I exceed this limit, I
> >> will get charged excessively per MB transferred. In my case the
> >> threshold is 500 MB per month, and since crossing such a boundary can
> >> have severe impact on a user's bill, some statistics on usage would be a
> >> welcomed feature.
> >>
> >> I propose adding integrated bandwidth usage statistics in NM that shows
> >> total mobile broadband usage for this month and the last 30 days.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Håvard Espeland
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> NetworkManager-list gnome org
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> >
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