gHacks technology news » bandwidth

Network Monitoring Software Networx 5 Released

Martin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:43:25 +0000

Our review of Networx 4 dates back to October of last year (see Network Monitoring Software NetWorx). The developer of the network monitoring software was busy between then and now and released regular updates to the monitoring software. Yesterday version 5 of Networx was released and the version bump gave us the excuse to take another look at the software program.

Networx offers several network and bandwidth related tools in its interface. It will place an icon in the Windows system tray after download that will open a bandwidth monitor on left-click and the context menu with all the available modules on a right-click.

The bandwidth monitor will display useful information about the bandwidth consumption of the computer system including daily, weekly and monthly reports, an overview of today’s bandwidth consumption, custom bandwidth reports, dial up sessions and hourly rates. Data can be exported and backed up among other things. This module gives the system administrator a quick overview of the bandwidth consumption of the computer system.

Networx offers additional modules that aid in the network monitoring process. This includes a speedmeter which can measure the network’s (or network devices) throughput. The tool is basically a speed test that will monitor the current network traffic and display the current, average and maximum transfer rates.

It is furthermore possible to setup a bandwidth quota and trigger alerts if 80% of that quota has been used. It is also possible to configure the quota to only cover upload or download bandwidth and set it to be a daily, weekly or monthly quota.

Ping, traceroute and netstat commands are available from the context menu of the network monitoring software as well. The options are quite extensive and allow the user to select an individual networking adapter to be monitored, configure notifications or define on and off peak hours.

Networx might not be the most sophisticated network monitoring software but it proves to be a nice solution for single computer systems.

Network Traffic Balancer

Martin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:23:47 +0000

Maximizing the download rate of an Internet connection might be a good way to download a file the fastest way but it can put a strain on all other network and Internet activities in that time. A user wanting to play an online game while downloading with full speed will notice high ping rates which is not desirable. It can also lead to disconnects or temporary load errors in general.

One way of dealing with this situation is to run a traffic balancer to ensure that the other activities are not affected by the downloads or uploads.

Netbalancer (via To The PC) is not limiting the bandwidth of the applications directly. It is instead changing the network priority of applications to control the Internet traffic. The network priority of a software that is demanding lots of bandwidth would be reduced by Netbalancer to ensure that other applications with a higher priority get their share of the bandwidth.

By default all network priorities are set to normal and it is up to the user to modify them. This usually means that applications like P2P clients, ftp clients or others that download and upload files continuously are reduced from normal to low. It could also mean to raise the network priority of an application to high to prioritize it.

The main interface looks similar to a process viewer. It displays all running processes of the computer system, their priority, incoming and outgoing traffic, the number of connections and additional information.

A right-click on any row will bring up a menu with options to change the network priority of a process or to allow or block its Internet traffic completely. There is also a handy button in the toolbar for all of these options plus the ability to block all network traffic.

A severity level can be configured in the options. The speed difference between low, normal and high priority can be set. Netbalancer might be the right application for users who regularly download or upload data while working with other applications that need bandwidth as well.

Tags: bandwidth, internet, internet traffic, netbalancer, network priority, network traffic, Network Traffic Balancer, traffic balancer

Barebone Web Surfing With Finch

Martin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:40:37 +0000

We have featured some articles in the past that explained how to reduce the bandwidth usage while surfing the Internet which is important for users who have to cope with a monthly bandwidth limit and those who are stuck with slow Internet connections. (Reduce Opera Bandwidth Usage and Use The Opera Mini Browser On A PC are two that come to mind)

Finch tries to achieve a similar goal. The web service acts pretty much like a web proxy with the difference that bandwidth reduction and not anonymity is the top priority. Finch will not load CSS files, no images and no scripts. Stripping a website of most of its contents reduces its size tremendously. The size of the New York Times homepage is reduced by 94% when using Finch.

This method has some serious disadvantages though. Many websites become unusable. Finch does not support scripts which are required by some to function properly. Cookies are not supported as well which meaning logins won’t function properly as well.

Finch works best on static websites or those that function without scripts and cookies. Running the website through Finch will reduce the bandwidth that is transferred which means a speed gain and reduction of the monthly transfer rate. It’s on the other hand nothing for users who spend most of their time on social sites.

Tags: bandwidth, connection speed, finch, internet, internet speed, low bandwidth, proxy, transfer rate, web proxy

Network Monitoring Software NetWorx

Martin — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:58:30 +0000

Networx is the second network monitoring software on review at Ghacks in the last months. It was recently released in version 4 which is compatible to all Windows operating systems since Windows 98 including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The network monitoring software can be used to monitor incoming and outgoing bandwidth of selected network adapters and connections. Traffic is shown in graphs and logged in a file for further processing. Reports are extensive and provide access to daily, weekly, monthly and custom reports.

A realtime network traffic graph visualizes the incoming and outgoing traffic. Notifications can be used to perform actions under configured conditions. They can be configured to run so called actions when network traffic drops or rises above a certain level. Possible actions include running a software, displaying visual and sound alerts or to drop the connection.

Networx includes network information and testing tools like netstat that display all applications currently using the network connection. The application uses roughly 10 Megabytes of computer memory in minimized state.

Tags: bandwidth, netstat, network, network bandwidth, Network Monitoring, Network Monitoring Software, networx

How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?

Martin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:32:37 +0000

Precious bandwidth. Many providers try everything in their power to make their customers who are on an unlimited plan or flatrate to reduce their monthly bandwidth usage which is quite the irony. The webhosting world is marching to the same tune for a very long time. One company seems to be at the center of the battle.

The name is Comcast who recently announced that they will limit the monthly bandwidth usage of their customers to 250 Gigabytes per month starting from October 1. Comcast did contact customers who did go beyond that limit in the past asking them to reduce their bandwidth usage which would be suspended if they did not.

Starting from October 1 customers who go beyond the 250 Gigabyte limit will receive a notification about their monthly bandwidth usage and a clear message that their account will be suspended if they go over the limit again in the next six months.

That leads to the question which is at the same time the title of the article: How much bandwidth do you need? Would you be able to stay under the 250 Gigabyte limit? I honestly have to answer that I won’t be able to stay under the limit. While 250 Gigabytes do seem a lot it becomes less if you divide it by the days of the month. A little bit more than 8 Gigabytes per day are available to the user.

If you watch high definition content on the Internet you will reach that limit easily. If you download videos, DVDs or use P2P you will also reach that limit. A lot of users will reach that limit, not only P2P users which anyone would suggest to be the only affected users.

So, how much bandwidth do you need per day / month?

Tags: bandwidth, bandwidth limit, comcast, internet, internet provider

Reduce Opera Bandwidth Usage

Martin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:43:03 +0000

I covered an article earlier this month that described changes that could be made to the Firefox configuration in order to save bandwidth. This is extremely useful if you are connected to a volume based internet connection where you pay per Megabyte or Gigabyte. Flatrates are not that common in many parts of the world and it is always a good idea to save bandwidth if you use a volume based connection.

The situation however is a bit different if you compare Firefox and Opera. Firefox users can install several extensions that help them save bandwidth while Opera users have to rely on the build in features and options offered in the preferences of the browser.

We make use of two methods to change configuration settings in Opera. The first is the Preferences menu which can be accessed from Tools > Preferences.

Check that images are only loaded if they are already in the cache by clicking on the Web Pages tab in Opera. It should display Cached Images next to the Images setting.

Now head over to the advanced tab and click on the Content entry in the left menu. Now disable animated images, sound in Web-pages, Javascript, Java and Plugins in that menu and add exceptions for the websites that you visit and require some of these. Most likely it will be Javascript that will be required.

You can add exceptions by clicking on Manage Site Preferences and adding websites that you want to configure individually.

Now click on History and change the interval that Opera uses to check if a new version of a document or image is available on a server. I suggest to change at least the image setting to 24 hours and the document setting to every hour. You can still force the check by hitting F5.

You can also disable favicons under browsing. Now download the Flashblocker file from Opera to replace flash content with a button that only loads that content if the button is pressed.

Make sure you read the instructions. You have to copy two files into different Opera directories and activate the Flashblocker in Opera.

Now head over to another userscript that blocks Javascript popups and make sure you read the instructions carefully.

Tags: bandwidth, internet, low bandwidth, opera, opera bandwidth, opera-tips, volume based

US to get metered bandwidth

Martin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:41:10 +0000

Innovation usually gets blocked or slowed down by monopolies. A company with barely any competition can make decisions that concentrate more on the profits and less on the satisfaction of their customers. Time-Warner is currently testing metered bandwidth plans for new customers in Beaumont, Texas. New customers have to select a metered bandwidth plan with a combined bandwidth consumption of 5 to 40 Gigabytes with no option to upgrade to a flatrate.

Every additional Gigabyte that will be transferred will be billed with $1 which could spill trouble for Youtube addicts or users whose Internet connection gets hacked. The interesting question is obviously why. Why are they testing metered bandwidth plans when the whole world, and most part of the United States, are going in the other direction.

Bandwidth demands are still rising globally which can be largely attributed to video portals who slowly but steadily raise the resolution of their videos but also file sharing, multimedia distribution and gaming.

Back to the why and the consequences. Cable Internet is limited by design which is probably the main reason why a company like Time Warner wants to reduce the bandwidth consumption of everyone using their lines to be able to squeeze more users into the existing hardware and offer everyone a better experience by reducing the chance that someone else is using most of the bandwidth on the shared line.

This in turn however means that users who have the financial means will be able to experience the Internet to its fullest while users with less financial resources will be left in the dark, so to speak.

It will be interesting to see if metered bandwidth will spread throughout the United States if the tests are successful in Texas. There is however hope. Innovation will come from other means of connecting to the Internet, for example mobile connections.

Tags: bandwidth, cable internet, internet, texas, time warner

Limit Upload and Download Bandwidth

Martin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:40:19 +0000

Several applications that connect to the Internet have options to limit the upload and download bandwidth. This is excellent if you need bandwidth for other tasks as well, for instance if you want to watch Internet TV while downloading from P2P networks. But what can you do if an application that connects to the Internet does not have such an option, if it regularly uses all of your bandwidth and slows down other applications because of it ?

Take all those TV streaming clients based on P2P technology or software updates for applications like World of Warcraft. They do not offer an option to limit the bandwidth.

Traffic Shaper XP [rediscovered at Raymond.CC] comes to the rescue. Users can restrict the upload and download bandwidth of certain ports and protocols on their systems. That’s right, it is not application based but that is not a huge problem normally unless you randomly select ports in your applications or use applications that do that by themselves.

The easiest way to add an rule in this application is to select one of the connections that are already in place. Just right-click the connection and select Create Matching Rule. Another option is to click on the Add Rules Wizard instead. The user can select the network adapter, if you want to limit the upload or download bandwidth, the protocol (tcp normally), if the rule should be valid for all computers or a specific IP and a port or port range.

The speed limit can be set to various standard values ranging from 0 to unlimited bytes per second. You normally find the port or port range in the options of the application that you use. It would be nice if Traffic Shapper XP would allow to set the upload and download bandwidth for a port in the same rule.

Tags: bandwidth, limit bandwidth, P2p, traffic shaper xp

Throttle Bandwidth of Firefox and IE

Martin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:21:46 +0000

Why would anyone want to throttle the bandwidth of Firefox or Internet Explorer ? That was my first thought when I read about two tiny apps for Firefox and Internet Explorer for the first time at Sizlopedia. I mean, it is normally the other way round. You download some large file or use P2P networks and want to use a browser as well which means that there should be a way to assign a minimum amount of bandwidth for the browser instead of throttling it. Everyone should be capable of not download large files or browsing all those rich entertainment websites if he really needs the bandwidth for something else.

Firefox Throttle and IE Throttle are add-ons for Firefox and Internet Explorer respectively that allow a user to throttle the bandwidth of the browser by selecting maximum values for upload and download. IPs and / or websites can be excluded from this effect which is good if you have a website that you don’t want to throttle. Local Area Network IPs are excluded automatically and some presets are available to choose the bandwidth assigned from.

Lastly it provides stats for uploads and downloads of the session as well as total stats since installing / reseting the add-on. The Internet Explorer version comes without stats.

A better but more complicated way of setting up bandwidth limitations would be to configure it on a broader level, say the router for instance which would have the advantage that the user could select all applications that connect to the Internet instead of just Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Guess some users might find this useful nevertheless.

Tags: add ons, bandwidth, firefox, firefox-extensions, internet-explorer, speed throttle

Bandwidth Monitor

Martin — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:51:04 +0000

Not every user has the luxury of a Internet flatrate and I personally know a few who are still using time or data related accounts. I experienced this as well when I used my mobile phone to connect to the Internet during a holiday. Every byte counts sometimes and it is always a good idea to monitor the bandwidth that you are using in that time.

Not only because it gives a clue about the bill that you can expect at the end of the month but also to have proof that you did not download more than the amount shown in the logs of the software.

The Cyber Bandwidth Monitor is one application that monitors bandwidth usage and displays daily, weekly, monthly and total stats. Each period is divided into uploads, downloads and a combination of the two to give you exact data that you can work with.

The user has the option to display a system tray icon that is showing a (mini) graph or a smaller window that can be set to be always on top. There is also a ping and traceroute function but I do not think that many users will need that.

Buttons for alerts and exports are also available but the functions have not been implemented yet. They will be most likely added in the coming releases.

Cyber Bandwidth Monitor is using roughly 6 Megabytes of RAM when run in the system tray.

Tags: bandwidth, data plan, isdn, modem, windows software

When Unlimited means limited

Martin — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:24:13 +0000

Did you ever fell into the trap that you signed up for an supposedly unlimited service only to find out at a later time that the unlimited service did not really mean unlimited at all ? I fell into that trap with my first website which i hosted using an unlimited webhosting plan. No extra money for transfers over a certain amount of gigabytes, no worries about cpu and sql usage, everything was advertised as being unlimited. I started hosting some file mirros and ran some pretty resource demanding scripts and it did not took long until I was told to either upgrade my hosting account to a dedicated server or leave the company and look for hosting elsewhere.

This was basically the termination of my account with that provider and I decided to read the terms of service throughly from that time on. Today I read about Verizons Unlimited Data Plan which has a download limit of 5 Gigabytes and restrictions in place that forbid many internet activities such as downloading and streaming movies, p2p or web camera posts. So, the biggest question I’m asking myself now is what exactly is unlimited in the unlimited data plan from Verizon ? It is obviously not the data, so what is it ? What justifies the name ?

I was not able to find an explanation for the term unlimited in Verizons unlimited data plan. It is pretty obvious that there is an inflation in terms like unlimited and flatrate. Many companies use it to lure customers who think that they get the real meaning of the word and not just a way of making more money by fooling the customers.

Back to Verizon, I really like the following sentence in their terms of service agreement:

Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice

So, all rights to the company, none to the customer. Would you really work with such a company ?

Tags: bandwidth, company, data plan, internet, unlimited, verizon

Monitor your traffic

Martin — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 07:47:13 +0000

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.

Tags: bandwidth, internet, monitor traffic, netmeter, traffic

gHacks technology news » bandwidth

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