Mac - app to show/graph network util real time

[masraum]

Mac folks, can anyone either tell me what I'm missing or give me a recommendation for something better that the "Activity Monitor".

I'm used to this from the Win 7 task manager. (this is main portion of the window for this display)


And with Mac, I get this tiny thing with no indication of scale. (this is normally a tiny bit at the bottom of a much larger window)



There's got to be something better, right. This is basically a *nix box, right?

[stomachmonkey]

Wired or WIFI?

For a paid utility LittleSnitch is hard to beat.

It's $45.00 but packed full of features.

WIFI has a built in hidden utility.

Option click the WIFI icon in the menu, Open Network Diagnostics.

Check under Windows menu option, even includes a sniffer.

I use it to tune my WIFI, will show you all neighboring networks bleeding into yours, what channels they are using so you can reassign your routers channels to something less noisy.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Wired or WIFI?

For a paid utility LittleSnitch is hard to beat.

It's $45.00 but packed full of features.

WIFI has a built in hidden utility.

Option click the WIFI icon in the menu, Open Network Diagnostics.

Check under Windows menu option, even includes a sniffer.

I use it to tune my WIFI, will show you all neighboring networks bleeding into yours, what channels they are using so you can reassign your routers channels to something less noisy.

Wifi is enabled (for inter-device communications), but the main connection is via the wire. That's good info and good to know about both, thanks. Wow, that the Wireless Diagnostics has a lot of cool features.

I was happy to see that netcat is included in the CLI. I hadn't thought to check if tcpdump was also included, but I see that it is. That's excellent!

[masraum]

I'll probably end up with LittleSnitch eventually.

In the mean time, I found this great little app, System Toolkit Lite. There's a pay version ($2) that offers more features. It looks like it might be worth it, but I don't have it.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/system-toolkit/id1234854699?mt=12

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I use Little Snitch and it’s excellent. I am not (and have no interest in being) an IT guy so I’ll it’s easy enough for a computer savvy lay person to use and powerful enough to really give you the kind of control over your network and what’s coming on to it that everyone ought to have.

Once you start seeing just how much rerouting goes on and how much garbage is worming its way onto your system with every web click these days you will be (and should be) horrified - but at least you’ll be able to do something about it now.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

I use Little Snitch and it’s excellent. I am not (and have no interest in being) an IT guy so I’ll it’s easy enough for a computer savvy lay person to use and powerful enough to really give you the kind of control over your network and what’s coming on to it that everyone ought to have.

Once you start seeing just how much rerouting goes on and how much garbage is worming its way onto your system with every web click these days you will be (and should be) horrified - but at least you’ll be able to do something about it now.

I also have Pi-Hole running on my NAS so a lot of the crap that you talk about seeing should be handled by Pi-Hole, but I also like the way LittleSnitch handles things.