Problem scenario
You want to monitor network traffic on an EC-2 server's NICs. You are not sure what to look for or what a baseline should look like. What do you do?
Solution
1. Install dstat. With a CentOS/RHEL/Fedora server, run this: sudo yum -y install dstat
2. Run this command: dstat -nt
3. With no network activity beyond the PuTTy session to the EC-2 server, you will see numbers like these: recv send| time
0 0 |13-12 01:05:06
40B 310B|13-12 01:05:07
40B 198B|13-12 01:05:08
40B 198B|13-12 01:05:09
40B 198B|13-12 01:05:10
82B 240B|13-12 01:05:11
The above represents minimal activity across the NIC of the server.
4. If you want to learn more about the dstat tool, see these links:
https://linux.die.net/man/1/dstat
https://linoxide.com/monitoring-2/dstat-monitor-linux-performance/