Monitor your traffic

If you want to monitor your network traffic either because you have an account that gives you only a limited amount of bandwidth each month or because you simply want to analyze the traffic that is sent over your connection during a special period. Netmeter starts in a small window immediately starting to record outgoing and incoming traffic as well as other data such as peak upload and download speed. You can adjust the transparency level of that window or move Netmeter into the system tray. You can also adjust the colors of the graph if you like but the default values can be nicely distinguished.

The most important feature of Netmeter is however not the current network traffic but the statistics that it accumulates over time. In short, it displays totals for the day, week and month as well as projected figures for the the same periods.

It also displays the peak upload and download which is the maximum amount of traffic that your connection was capable of. This can be used to analyze the download and upload limit of your connection. Helpful if your provider sold you a 16 Mbit connection but you only get speeds of 2 Mbit. Just make sure you use to download and upload data from a server that is capable of sending data in your maximum speeds.

Netmeter has an alert function that warns you when you reach a defined amount of gigabytes during a day, week or month. This is probably the best feature for users with limited bandwidth accounts making sure that you do not have to pay additional fees to your provider because you went over your bandwidth limit.

Best of all it is free to use and does not use many resources. Available only for Microsoft Windows. Found at Lifehacker.