Network activity monitor broken

Question

Level 1

9 points

Network activity monitor broken

I'm having extreme slowness on wifi (can't replicate over wired) and decided to launch activity monitor.

The Network tab appears to do absolutely except for a very few select apps, mostly stuff running on the UI. I'm currently pushing 200M/s over rsync and iterm (tried with built-in terminal - same) stays at 0, all the time.

This is a fresh install (format not upgrade) on a MBA late 2014.

So how do I get OSX to properly monitor my network without third party tools?

Thanks

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Mar 21, 2016 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 21, 2016 10:51 AM in response to lethe6

I don't do what you are trying to do, but that sounds like something you would do through OS X Server.

Have a nice day.

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Answer 2

Duane

Level 10

124,293 points

Mar 21, 2016 11:17 AM in response to lethe6

Do you have Activity Monitor configured to show all processes? Go to View menu and ensure that "All Processes" is checked.

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Answer 3

lethe6 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 21, 2016 11:20 AM in response to Duane

Yep. I can see it listed, but with everything at 0:

iTerm 0 bytes 0 bytes 0 0 19687 me 0 bytes 0 bytes 64 bit 0.0 9:38.97

0 bytes 0 bytes 0 bytes No No

No - 0 bytes 0 bytes 0 bytes No No

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Answer 4

Duane

Level 10

124,293 points

Mar 21, 2016 11:26 AM in response to lethe6

If the above is the listing from Activity Monitor then you do NOT have it set to show all processes. You should see items which are owned by the root user, items owned by you, and items owned by processes starting with an "_".

Please post a screenshot.

The screenshot below shows some of the processes shown on my MacBook Pro. (I have it scrolled so it doesn't show my user processes).

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Answer 5

lethe6 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 21, 2016 12:17 PM in response to Duane

Click on a process, copy, then paste here. You'll see.

Attached is the exact same problem.

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Answer 6

Duane

Level 10

124,293 points

Mar 21, 2016 12:26 PM in response to lethe6

I misunderstood your post above. Why are you fixated on the iTerm application? To see the heavy data users scroll to the top of that list.

BTW, it looks like iTerm 2 is a successor to iTerm (https://www.iterm2.com/).

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Answer 7

lethe6 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 21, 2016 3:55 PM in response to lethe6

Rsync is running through iTerm and doesn't appear in the process list anywhere. iTerm is the parent process. Also, I'm using the bundled rsync, not brew or macports.

The highest listed is kernel_task with 350MB. I pushed over 100GB so far. I'm running rsync from the local disk to a network disk mounted to /Volumes through AFP (but samba does the same). So maybe the rsync traffic is detected as local? That would explain why iTerm stays at 0, but then the traffic should still be logged by the AFP/network stack somehow; nothing appears in Activity Monitor that even comes close to that sort of traffic.

So basically, according to Activity Monitor, that traffic doesn't exist?

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Answer 8

Duane

Level 10

124,293 points

Mar 21, 2016 4:19 PM in response to lethe6

If you are looking for data network speed analysis, Activity Monitor isn't going to provide the information that you need. You need a network monitoring tool.

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Answer 9

lethe6 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 23, 2016 3:49 AM in response to Duane

No, I'm not looking for analysis. I'm looking for a way to monitor the network natively; what activity monitor claims it does but obviously doesn't. A colleague confirms the same behavior on his El Capitan Macbook. I have no issues with Yosemite on my old mini.

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