Some of you might be using an Internet plan from your ISP which has limited bandwidth. As far as I know, ALL of the wireless broadband in Malaysia allows unlimited usage BUT there is a fair usage threshold where once you go over the limit, your connection speed will be throttled to a very slow dial-up speed. I have a Celcom wireless broadband subscription and they offer two types of plan which is 384Kbps or 3.6Mbps. Both package allows you to download stuff at maximum speed but once you reached 5GB limit PER month, then you’re screwed with a really slow speed. Honestly it doesn’t make any sense to subscribe a 3.6Mbps download speed when you can only use 5GB of the bandwidth per month. The worst part is even the uploading bandwidth is counted to the usage.
At least they now tell us in advanced that there is a fair usage policy because last time they never expose this information publicly and you can only find it in their really long list of terms and conditions page which no one really reads. When you find out that there is a fair usage policy and file a complaint, they blame you for not reading the terms before signing up. For those that are subscribed to an Internet connection package which has limited bandwidth usage, it is important that you keep track of your bandwidth usage. Here’s a free internet traffic monitoring software that works.
iTraffic Monitor is a network monitor and reporting tool. It provides real time graph of network traffic. Detailed stats provide daily/weekly/monthly/yearly stats. Stop watch, Session stats.
Monitor and review your Internet or network bandwidth usage with ease How fast your internet connection? We can graph it for your review How much data do you transfer? We show you a real-time graph or numerical display, as well as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly reports Requires minimal desktop space and system resources
This is how iTraffic report looks like. It’s easy to read and nothing too fancy or complicated.
iTraffic Monitor is relatively new as this is their first version released on 4/22/2009. A few small bugs here and there such as copying the report to clipboard generates an access violation error but it’s no big deal and hopefully they’ll fix it in their next release. What I like about iTraffic Monitor is it can filter out local network traffic or traffic between specific IP addresses. This is very important for people connected to the internet via a local area network (LAN). Very few network monitors can do this and the ones that do usually is a shareware that cost money.
This software is free and takes less than 2MB memory while monitoring your bandwidth usage. Claims to work on all Windows.
Related posts:
Isn’t this software similar to networx!!!
Thanx for sharing but how to check which ip on LAN having more d/l or u/l ?
I see many people use Protemac meter…I’ll try too..
agree, protemac Meter good prog
mm…as for me I use ProteMac Meter
Hi Raymond, I had also just wanted to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to read a little of your knowledge. I am by no means anywhere near the standard (Level) of your ability, however you alway’s seem to have an insight that everyone can find usefull.
Thanking you kindly, D. Micallef.
jcym, the BSODs happened when Comodo firewall drivers were hammered. Updating Comodo resoved the issue.
can u plz compress windows 7
Spook Murphy, out of curiosity, what error codes do the BSOD display.
On networx LAN exclusion-
Selecting networx Ignore local traffic within the LAN BSODs any box the option is selected on here. 2003 svr sp2 & (3)XP sp3
As a follow up to my post, after approximately 24 hours and 10GB (7GB-DL/3GB-UL) of external usage (I have a truly unlimited ADSL2+ plan) shared across three PCs, the total displayed on the three Networx installations were within a MB of each other. That level of accuracy, i.e. +/-0.01%, is more than acceptable.
BTW, in the 24 hours, the two Vista machines were rebooted twice each and entered Vista’s combined Sleep/Hibernation mode once and the XP machine entered Sleep once so Netwrox ‘sync’ stays in sync across differing types of close down and restarts.
Note: If one or more of the PCs with Networx installed is actually uploading/downloading when you check the usage across all the machines then there will likely be a mismatch between the readings on the different Networx installations, even if you Click the refresh button on each install. This mismtach can be up to a 100MB or so which appears to depend on the amount being cached by the application/s doing the up/downloading with the machine doing the most of the downloading being ahead in its Usage Report. However, once any uploading/downloading is finished then the different installs will ‘catch up’ with each other so if you now press the Refresh button on each Usage Report page then the figures should be very close to each other.
Well done jcym – a fine – well reasoned and justified contribution. Respect.
Well after some more playing around I am back. Sorry Raymond, you don’t often send us a turkey, but this is definitely one, on Vista it is anyway. On XP it is OK and the minor niggles there I could live with.
However, on Vista it is a complete nightmare. Change any of the optional settings, such as display layout/colours and max bandwidth settings etc, from the default and reboot and they are gone and you are back to the basic or default iTraffic setup. Doesn’t matter what I tried and I spent a couple of hours this PM trying various things that usually work on Vista with recalcitrant programs, i.e. whether I change permissions or set it to run as admin etc, it still lost all my new settings on reboot ans fell back to the default iTraffic setup.
Additionally, it is not very effective at filtering out my LAN from my WAN traffic, even when I manually entered the IP of each network device on my LAN. And yes, WinPCap was properly installed as it worked fine with other tools I occasionally use on Vista that need WinPCap and I already had the same version that this installs on the Vista laptops I tested it on. Just to make sure that I hadn’t screwed anything up by installing its version of WinPCap over my existing one and causing a conflict, even though they were the same version, I used the Paragon image I had created previous to installing iTraffic (the minor niggles in XP left me wary when trying it on Vista) to roll my laptop back to pre iTraffic setup, removed the version of WinPCap that was already on there and then reinstalled iTraffic and let it install its included WinPCap. Still no go, but the other tools I occasionally use that need WinPCap worked just fine using the version that iTraffic installed so the problem wasn’t some kind of mismatch between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ WinPCap.
Thus, iTraffic, IMO at least, has a very long way to go before it is ready for prime time on Vista, though it appears to work OK on XP and it might just be my Vista setup that it messes up on, though I have tried it on two Vista laptops, one a Vista Home Premium and the other a Vista Business.
However, after a recommendation from Des further up thread (thanks muchly Des I don’t know how I missed that one as I have occasionally used a few of their other utils for quite a while, such as their basic file_recovery util) I then tried Networx from Softperfect and it does the job just fine. Though admittedly, it is quite a bit more complex to setup just as you want it compared to iTraffic. Then again it is a much more comprehensive set of tools than iTraffic but there is pretty good documentation available online on their site when you Click Help from any of the Networx modules. But it will take a little bit of time to get to grips with everything it can do. But saying that, though admittedly I am probably more experienced than the average user (in IT since the 70s), I managed to set it up without referring to the help files as the labels on the menu available when right clicking Networx’s Tray icon are relatively self explanatory as are most of the various options available in each of the various modules.
Thus for anyone who wants to monitor external/WAN, traffic while ignoring internal/LAN traffic it does do the job just fine, if that is all you want.
Additionally, as I see a few asking about these features in particular up thread, it is also useful on a LAN in that it can be made aware of other PCs on the LAN that are running Networx and can synchronise between them, just go to the Settings/Advanced tab and click the Synchronisation box. Depending on your Firewall and its settings you will likely be prompted to allow it through, as did I on each machine I installed it on. Though I have yet to test how accurate it is in sync mode. But in the meantime I have set up a couple of different tools that will allow me to do that over the next couple of days so I will report back on how good it is. And probably at least as useful for those on metered and limited Broadband packages, it can also be set to differentiate between on-Peak, Off-Peak and Unmetered traffic as well as give warnings and take a range of user selectable actions when you reach or exceed a user selected percentage of your entered monthly usage limits under Settings/Notification.
Sorry Raymond if I have gone on a bit and taken over the thread a tad :), not my intention. However, I thought my experience with Networx might be useful for the many who, from this thread a last, appear to need such a comprehensive monitoring tool and who might have as bad an experience with iTrafffic as I did.
Nicky, it does have a session option, use either F6 or go to the Right Click menu to display it.
Not a bad program, especially the basic feature of separating WAN from LAN traffic. However, on both XP/SP3 and VIsta/SP1 it is more than a bit buggy in responding properly when you pick any of the options beyond its basic monitoring function. I.e. one time you press any of the appropriate function keys or activate it from the Right Click menu and it works perfectly, the next time it might not. If a particular added function won’t work, whether using its Function key or the right right click menu to activate it, then you can almost guarantee that none of the other additional functions can be switched on/off either. I have had to exit the program a few times to get it working properly again.
Perhaps after a few iterations they will have sorted out the niggles. However, even with the niggles, if you just want a simple low resource usage traffic monitor which can optionally ignore LAN traffic leaving just the WAN traffic monitored and only use that function then it is more than adequate.
I currently use NetWorx, but am not convinced that it works correctly. It does have a very useful feature to separate peak from free usage.
Someone know a similar solution for monitoring an ethX port on Ubuntu? It’s my firewall/router at home.
what about the download/upload per session? does this software show that? From the screenshot posted, thats not there..but does it really include that feature?
Correction to above:
I really need whole network, not PC it is on.
Does this monitor the traffic from your entire network (using a hub and not a switch) or only for the PC it is on? I really need PC it’s on as I have 6-7 computers that all access the internet, in addition to my home server and Wii.
can this also work in ubuntu?
very useful s/w.thnx raymond
Thanks Ray!
I’m using this right now. :)
wuld this program be lighter and more accurate than networx since thats what im currently using?
Do u know that Celcom BB can be reset even after u reached the 5GB quota limit? Reset it everyday and u will get full speed everyday.
while trying to install iTraffic Monitor along with additional component WinPcap (which filters LAN traffic) KIS 2010 alerted with major threat. Is it false alarm?
Yeah….I have also limited usage broadband plan & that’s why I’m going to try it.
thanks ray.. useful software
it is low on memory i will be using it , thanks raymond
monitor software not work if u multiboot with different operating system, sharing pc desktop, laptop, netbook.
for celcom, just call 1111 from celcom line.
thanks mate for sharing this software…
iuse networx too,but the portable-version.
It is free, in a lot of languages and very good indeed.
Thanks a lot Ray. OMG, you’re still on CELCOM Wireless Broadband? I quit mine ages ago because the service sucks. They claim 3.6Mbps but I was getting only less than 1Kbps although I live on the 3rd floor in Jalan Ampang. At times I used my NOKIA E61I as a modem and still very bad coverage.
Now I’m using P1WIMAX Lite and no complaints so far since I’m a light user. Good luck and take care.
I m using DU meter ATM. I am connected to net thru LAN. now problem is that, whenever i copy some files from server or other pcs in n/w, the DU meter records it as network traffic. making it impossible to know exact upp/down for internet. i guess this tool will solve that problem
Hey, the UI is kind of copies from an open source project called net meter,
metal-machine.de/readerror/
The last version released was a beta and then the project was made open source. I have used it and the beta does not seem to have any bugs.
Raymond, how about cFosSpeed? does it do the same?
I use NetWorx(softperfect.com/download/)
It does everything you listed and is also free.I’ve been using it for a year now and it is light on system resources and very accurate with its information(confirmed by my isp.)
really useful sofware
really usefull software
great
Seems Good, uses low memory.
But lacks just one important feature for users who have ‘happy free Usage hours’
-How about including a rule to exclude/Include Internet activity for a duration during a day? (happy free hours)
-How about an ‘ALERT’ feature, to inform the user that the set Internet Monthly/weekly Bandwidth Quota is over. This way easier that the user will never overshoot her/his usage.
-How about an Hourly report? For those who are about to reach the monthly limit, and would like to know each MB expended?
Stopwatch needs initiation each time, and doesn’t give options to exclude some hours, details like how much bandwidth each hour etc,
Until the above are included, itraffic monitor isn’t of much use to me, and is one among the ‘many’ similar apps out there.
There is one another app who does all the above mentioned and more, but is a shareware and consumes more memory: BWMETER
Thanks for reading.
me too limited bandwidth user.
this is useful.
thanks Ray…
BTW bitmeter can do the same.. any we let me try
ray rocks again
Just what i had been looking for. I am one of the aforementioned limited bandwidth user.
Thanks a lot.