Measure IPv4 versus IPv6 traffic with netstat on Linux

There appears to be an easy way to measure IPv4 versus IPv6 traffic on Linux:



sander@hapee:~$ netstat -s  | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast
    InOctets: 242397362
    OutOctets: 76157803
sander@hapee:~$ netstat -s -6 | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast
    Ip6InOctets: 105884560
    Ip6OutOctets: 21024110
sander@hapee:~$ 

For those who don't know: an octet is an 8-bit byte.

Be aware that that the netstat counter apparantly is 32-bit, and two's complement, so the value will go from 0 to 2^31, and then to -2^31. So the value can be negative:

sander@hapee:~$ netstat -s  | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast

    InOctets: -249959401

    OutOctets: 72041351

If you use MRTG, MRTG can take care of these rollovers

UPDATE:

The current git version of net-tools / netstat solves the roll-over. Installation using git:


git clone git://net-tools.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/net-tools/net-tools
cd net-tools/
make config
make

sudo make install

Result:


$ netstat -s | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast
    InOctets: 44243555321
    OutOctets: 216954870
$ 

So counter is at 44GB, well above 4.2GB. No more rollover. :-)

EDIT:
A one-liner to show traffic in GB:


$ ./netstat -s | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast | awk '{ print $2/(1024*1024*1024) " GB" }'
65.0086 GB
1.51142 GB

$ ./netstat -s -6 | grep -i octet | grep -vi cast | awk '{ print $2/(1024*1024*1024) " GB" }'
5.0461111 GB
0.7176651 GB