bwmon vs SoftPerfect Bandwidth Manager

bwmon is a free, self-hosted bandwidth monitor for one Linux host and one network interface. Its dashboard updates receive and transmit rates every second, charts recent traffic, and lists top processes. When traffic passes five times its rolling two-minute average, bwmon records process attribution, all-interface rates, and leading conntrack flows for spike investigation. It retains five-minute samples for six months, with views from one hour to all time, a time-of-week heatmap, and a rate histogram. A banner appears when the rolling five-minute average reaches 40 Mbps; cleared alerts remain in the history table. Installation uses a shell script that sets up the collector, systemd service, cron jobs, and nginx server block; the dashboard defaults to port 8080. It requires Linux kernel 4.0 or later and root access. Debian and Ubuntu use the apt-based installer, while other distributions need manual dependency setup. The project recommends authentication for internet-exposed installations.

SoftPerfect Bandwidth Manager monitors network traffic and applies bandwidth limits and quality-of-service rules. Administrators can target IP or MAC addresses, ports, protocols, and network interfaces, then set prioritized bidirectional rate and usage limits. Configuration can be centralized at one network location, and end users usually do not need client software. Quotas, scheduling, email notifications, reports, and a live usage monitor help track traffic. Enterprise adds deep packet inspection for detecting IM, P2P file sharing, gaming, and media streaming. Remote management uses a Windows GUI console connecting over TCP port 8701; the vendor says there is no web-based management interface. The product's stated purpose is Windows network management, and version 3.3.0 added Windows ARM64 support while setting Windows 10 as the minimum. The free Lite plan allows five rules or streams. Paid perpetual licences range from $49, paid once to $4,500, paid once and include one year of free updates. The vendor describes compatibility with Microsoft ISA Server and Internet Connection Sharing.