Bmon is a commandline program that comes in very handy for watching the throughput of data ports. While there are several GUI utilities to do this, the fact that Bmon is a terminal program allows you to log into a remote server and monitor its throughput. In fact, it’s installed on my server so I can use it to make sure the computer’s connection is up to speed.

You must have the Developers Tools installed to build the program. Download the source code here.

Once the file is unstuffed open a terminal. Using the cd command (change directory) navigate to the bmon folder. You can enter the location manually or drag and drop the folder into the terminal after typing cd and a blank space.

Enter each of the commands noted below and wait for the output to stop scrolling before moving on in the list.

./configure
make sudo cp bmon /usr/bin/
sudo cp bmon.1 /usr/share/man/man1/

Then open a new terminal and type bmon to see the display.

You can change the disply mode by entering a single letter:

(o)verview (g)raphical (d)etailed

Type man bmon to access the manual where you’ll find more information on using bmon.