UH.LEE.KA » ntop http://www.uhleeka.com/blog If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a few car payments. Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:35:57 +0000 en hourly 1 Limiting network file transfer throughput with rsync http://www.uhleeka.com/blog/2009/10/limiting-network-file-transfer-throughput-with-rsync/ http://www.uhleeka.com/blog/2009/10/limiting-network-file-transfer-throughput-with-rsync/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:42:32 +0000 uhleeka http://www.uhleeka.com/blog/?p=404 To transfer a large amount of data (200GB) across a 100mbps network without saturating the connection, I used rsync with the –bwlimit=KBps flag.

Transferring from Windows to Ubuntu 9.04, I first mounted the windows share:

sudo mkdir /mnt/winshare
sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=user,password=pass //winserver/share /mnt/winshare

Next, run rsync with a specified bwlimit. Optionally, unmount the share

sudo rsync -vrR --delete --delete-excluded --bwlimit=6144 /mnt/winshare/* /destination/
sudo umount /mnt/winshare


Note that the bwlimit is in kilobytes not kilobits — 6144 KB ~= 48 Mbps. Also note that the bwlimit is limiting the I/O bandwidth…whatever that means.

    --bwlimit=KBPS          limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second

NTop (http://www.ntop.org) is great for tracking bandwidth usage:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ntop

Set the administrative account password for ntop to run under:

sudo ntop -A

Start the service:

sudo /etc/init.d/ntop start

Browse the reports on the default port, 3000. http://yourserver:3000/

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