I'm looking for a network bandwidth monitoring tool with a gui that I can reset the monthly download and upload measurements. My isp (charter) is going to cap bandwidth, and I need to start keeping track of my bandwidth.

I use KDE and Mandriva, but I'm not sure that matters. I can use Gnome just as easily.

Do you have a host through which all traffic runs, like a firewall/router? If yes, and if that host is Linux, then it is trivial to get the numbers you require from iptables. I have no idea what purpose a GUI could serve, but what I do is collect one-minute samples of traffic, and use a bit of perl code to produce a plot and total throughput numbers using a web interface.
--- rod.

I have no idea what my host, Charter, does. I have a router and already have a bandwidth monitor on my windows machine (I believe called bandwidth monitor that gives me daily, weekly, and monthly amounts). I just need a bit of software that'll keep track of my bandwidth downloads in Linux that will show monthly or be reset.

Basically, a Linux version of:

http://www.bwmonitor.com/

... or similar.

A gui would make it easier for me and visually more appealing.

Your options:
1] Change your ISP
2] Ask your search engine to search this site for usage / bandwidth / logging /monitoring / etc.

Because I know this Q has been answered before on these forums, but I never bookmarked the link, I just thought "that's interesting, if I ever need it". (I have not needed it).

Hmm. I just searched again. Try this thread, it may get you started: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...17#post3283217

Unless the tool runs on the device that concentrates all traffic going in and out of the LAN, you will have no way of distinguishing what traffic is local and what traffic is leaving or entering the LAN. Even if you are able to distinguish this, your total throughput will still be distributed across all hosts on the LAN, and you will have to aggregate the results from all hosts in order to get a meaningful number.
In Linux, a quick and dirty way of getting the total throughput since last boot: (as root)
I use this in a cronjob, along with the '-z' option to zero the counters. A one-liner perl script sucks the numeric data out of the listings, and stores it in a log file, which I can plot and compute totals from. I, too, am encumbered by throughput limits imposed by my home ISP, and this is how I monitor throughput, but do so on a Linux iptables firewall.

With just a bit of creativity, one could write a few hundred lines of code to put a GUI in front of this.
--- rod.

Good point, especially if you are going to be switching from linux to windows and back again.
My modem / router has a webpage that gives up/download statistics, maybe yours has too, and you can get the information you need from there.