Create a Network Traffic Monitor using Python | psutil, prettytable | Source Code | PySeek

Networks are everywhere. They connect our computers and devices to each other and to the internet. They allow us to communicate with each other and share information. But they can also be a source of frustration, especially when they’re not working properly.

That’s where a network traffic monitor comes in. A network traffic monitor can help you troubleshoot problems on your network and see what’s going on with your traffic.

There are a lot of different ways to create a network traffic monitor. You can use commercial software, or you can roll your own using open source tools.

In this article, we’re going to show you how to create a network traffic monitor using Python and the open source libraries psutil and prettytable . We’ll also provide the source code for our network traffic monitor so you can use it on your own networks.

What is Network Traffic?

Before we jump into the code, let’s take a quick look at what network traffic is and why it’s important to monitor it.

Network traffic is the data that flows through your network. This data can be generated by computers, devices, and applications on your network or on other networks. It can be things like web browsing data, email data, file transfers, etc.

Monitoring your network traffic can help you troubleshoot problems on your network or see what kind of activity is going on. For example, if you’re having issues with slow internet speeds, monitoring your network traffic can help you identify which devices or applications are using the most bandwidth. Or if you’re worried about someone hacking into your system, monitoring network traffic can help you spot suspicious activity.

Why Monitor Network Traffic?

There are many reasons why you might want to monitor your network traffic. Here are just a few:
– Troubleshoot problems with your network or internet connection
– See which devices or applications are using the most bandwidth
– Find out if there is any suspicious activity going on
– Understand how much data is being transferred over your network
– Plan for future growth by understanding current trends in usage

Whatever your reason for wanting to monitornetwork traffic , Python makes it easy to do with the help of the psutil and prettytable libraries . Let’s take a look at how to get started .

What You ‘ll Need

Before we dive into the code , there ‘s just a few things you ‘ll need in order to follow along :

– A computer with Python installed . You can download Python from python . org .

– The psutil library . You can install this using pip : ` pip install psutil ` .

– The prettytable library . You can install this using pip : ` pip install prettytable ` .

With those dependencies installed , we ‘re ready to get started !

Creating the Network Traffic Monitor

Our script is going to do three things : grab information about the current state of ournetwork interfaces , display that information in a table format , and then export that informationto CSV so we can save it for later analysis . Let ‘s take a look at each part of our script in detail :