Pipe Viewer
To visualize data throughput through a pipe use Pipe Viewer tool.
$ sudo apt-get install pv
For example just replace every pipe with | pv |:
$ cat bigfile.txt | gzip -9 > /tmp/test.gz
$
```shell
$ cat bigfile.txt | pv | gzip -9 > /tmp/test.gz
14MB 0:00:00 [22.6MB/s] [ <=> ]
$