There is no easy way to track real-time per-user bandwidth usage for SSH and SFTP. I think assigning one port to each user may help. Idea of implementation Use case Bob, with UID 1001, shall connect on port 31001. Alice, with UID 1002, shall connect on port 31002. John, with UID 1003, shall connect on port 31003. (I do not want to lauch several sshd instances as proposed in question 247291.) 1. Setup for SFTP: In /etc/ssh/sshd_config: Port 31001 Port 31002 Port 31003 Subsystem sftp /usr/bin/sftp-wrapper.sh The file sftp-wrapper.sh starts the sftp server only if the port is the correct one: #!/bin/sh mandatory_port=3`id -u` current_port=`echo $SSH_CONNECTION | awk '{print $4}'` if [ $mandatory_port -eq $current_port ] then exec /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server fi 2. Additional setup for SSH: A few lines in /etc/profile prevents the user from connecting on the wrong port: if [ -n "$SSH_CONNECTION" ] then mandatory_port=3`id -u` current_port=`echo $SSH_CONNECTION | awk '{print $4}'` if [ $mandatory_port -ne $current_port ] then echo "Please connect on port $mandatory_port." exit 1 fi fi Benefits Now it should be easy to monitor per-user bandwidth usage. A Rrdtool-based application could produce charts like this: I know this won't be a perfect calculation of the bandwidth usage: for example, if somebody launches a bruteforce attack on port 31001, there will be a lot of traffic on this port although not from Bob. But this is not a problem to me: I do not need an exact computation of per-user bandwidth usage, but an indicator that is approximately correct in standard situations. Questions Is the idea of assigning one port for each user is a good one? Is the proposed setup an reliable one? If I have to open dozens of ports for many users, should I expect a performance drawback? Do you know a rrdtool-based application which could make the chart above?