nload(1)

📦

version 0.7.4+git20180309.8f92dc0 · 3 versions

0.7.4+git20180309.8f92dc0 · ubuntu stonking (latest)
0.7.4 · alpine 3.22, alpine 3.23, alpine 3.24, arch rolling, epel 10, epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, opensuse-leap 16.0
0.7.4 · debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute

💖 nload(1) — the network-vibes manual 💖

okay bestie, so this whole page is about nload, a network monitoring tool, and yes it's a real manual page with a real manual name and everything. Strap in 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

nload — displays the current network usage 👀🌐

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nload [-a period] [-i max_scaling] [-m] [-o max_scaling] [-t interval]
[-u h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G] [-U h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G] [devices]

nload --help|-h

like. that's the whole summoning ritual, no cap 🕯️✨

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So nload is a console application that monitors your network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time, which is lowkey iconic of it. It visualizes the in- and outgoing traffic using two graphs, and it also hands you extra info like the total amount of transferred data and the min/max network usage. It's giving dashboard, it's giving main character energy 📊💅

✨ USAGE ✨

When you're running nload, you can switch between the devices — either the ones you handed it on the command line, or the ones it auto-detected — by pressing the ← and → arrow keys. And if the -m command line parameter is given, those arrow keys switch as many devices back and forth as there are shown on the screen. Wanna dip out? Press q or Ctrl+C and you're free ✌️

For further key shortcuts, have a look at the sections MAIN WINDOW and OPTION WINDOW below. They're right there, bestie, scroll a lil 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

A summary of the options supported by nload is included below. Every single one, we're not skipping, periodt 💅

-a period — Sets the length in seconds of the time window for average calculation. The default is 300. ⏳
-i max_scaling — Specifies the 100% mark in kBit/s of the graph indicating the incoming bandwidth usage. Use 0 for automatic scaling. Ignored if the switch -m is given. The default value for max_scaling is 0 (automatic). 📈
-m — Show multiple devices at a time; do not show the traffic graphs. (yes, the graphs go bye-bye 🥲)
-o max_scaling — Same as -i but for the graph indicating the outgoing bandwidth usage. 📉
-t interval — Determines the refresh interval of the display in milliseconds. The default value of interval is 500.

PLEASE NOTE: Specifying refresh intervals shorter than about 100 milliseconds makes traffic calculation very unprecise. Also the display may flicker using such short refresh intervals. nload tries to balance this out by doing extra time measurements, but this may not always succeed. 😭 So like, don't be chaotic about it fr fr.

-u h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G — Sets the type of unit used for the display of traffic numbers. h means human readable (auto), b Bit/s, k kBit/s, m MBit/s and g GBit/s. The upper case letters mean the corresponding units in Bytes (instead of Bits). The default is k. 🔤
-U h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G — Same as -u, but for an amount of data, e.g. Bit, kByte, GBit etc. (without "/s"). The default is M. 💾
-f filename — Appends traffic data to the named file. See the section TRAFFIC LOGGING FORMAT below for an explanation of the logged information. 📝
devices — Network devices to use. The default is "all", which means to display all auto-detected devices. 🖥️🖥️🖥️
-h, --help — Show a short summary of these command line options. 🆘

✨ MAIN WINDOW ✨

After starting, nload begins to monitor the network devices given on the command line, or, if none where specified, the default device. In this mode, the following key shortcuts are available. 🎮

ArrowRight, ArrowDown, PageDown, Enter, Tab — Switch the display to the next network device, or, when started with the -m flag, to the next page of devices. ➡️
ArrowLeft, ArrowUp, PageUp — Switch the display to the previous network device, or, when started with the -m flag, to the previous page of devices. ⬅️
F2 — Show the option window (see section OPTION WINDOW below). ⚙️
F5 — Save current settings to the user's config file. 💾✨
F6 — Reload settings from the config files. 🔄
q, Ctrl+C — Quit nload. 👋

✨ OPTION WINDOW ✨

The parameters given to nload on the command line can be adjusted during run time by pressing the F2 key. A small window appears on the top of the screen, listing the available settings. It's like a lil pop-up shop for your config 🛍️

F2 — Show/hide the option window. 🪟
ArrowLeft, ArrowRight, Home, End — Navigate within the edit fields. ✏️
ArrowUp, ArrowDown, Enter — Navigate between the settings. 🔼🔽
PageUp, PageDown, Tab — Toggle between the different values possible for the current field. 🔁
+ / - — Switch to the next / previous page of settings. 📄

✨ TRAFFIC LOGGING FORMAT ✨

Traffic is logged as a simple text table, with each line describing the traffic status of a single network device at a specific time. The first line of output serves as a table header naming each column of data. Columns are separated by a single space character. The meaning of each column is described below. Nerdy but make it cute 🧚

Date — The date of the log entry in YYYY-MM-DD format, where YYYY is the four-digit year, MM the two-digit month (01-12) and DD the two-digit day (01-31). 📅
Time — The time of the log entry in HH:MM:SS format, where HH, MM and SS are the two-digit hours (00-23), minutes (00-59) and seconds (00-60). 🕰️
DeviceName — The name of the network device for which this log entry applies. 🏷️
DataInTotal — The number of bytes received since boot. ⬇️
DataOutTotal — The number of bytes transmitted since boot. ⬆️
DataInPerSecond — The number of bytes currently being received per second. 🏃
DataOutPerSecond — The number of bytes currently being transmitted per second. 🏃‍♀️
DataInAverage — The number of bytes being received in average, calculated by using the time interval specified with the -a parameter or configured in the configuration file. 📊
DataOutAverge — The number of bytes being transmitted in average, calculated by using the time interval specified with the -a parameter or configured in the configuration file. 📊 (and yes bestie, it is spelled exactly like that in the original, we do not fix, we do not correct, we simply relay 💀*)*
DataInMin — The absolute minimum number of bytes received per second, calculated since starting nload. 🔻
DataOutMin — The absolute minimum number of bytes transmitted per second, calculated since starting nload. 🔻
DataInMax — The absolute maximum number of bytes received per second, calculated since starting nload. 🔺
DataOutMax — The absolute maximum number of bytes transmitted per second, calculated since starting nload. 🔺
TimeSeconds — The date and time of the log entry as seconds since the Unix Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC). ⏱️
TimeMicroSeconds — The microseconds part of the date and time in TimeSeconds. 🔬

✨ FILES ✨

$(HOME)/.nload — User-specific configuration file (overrides system-wide settings). Press F5 from within nload to save the current settings to this file. 🏠
/etc/nload.conf — System-wide configuration file. It uses the same syntax as the user-specific configuration file. 🏢
**/sys/class/net/*/* /proc/net/dev** — are read by nload` when running on Linux to get the network traffic data. 🐧

✨ VERSION ✨

This manual page describes version 0.7.4 of nload. 🌈

For updates, look at the nload homepage: http://www.roland-riegel.de/nload/

✨ AUTHOR ✨

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 📜

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. ⚠️

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. ✉️

and that's the whole thing, bestie!! 🫶 This came from the Network monitoring tools corner of the man-page universe, written for nload version 0.7.4, and the page itself is dated February 06, 2012 — yeah it's vintage but it ate and left no crumbs 💅✨ bye!! 💖

📦 where this page comes from

ubuntu stonking: nload 0.7.4+git20180309.8f92dc0-0.1 · GPL-2.0-or-later
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-11-02: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms