The program uses the freely available WinPcap which provides access to the network traffic information. The program itself displays two different types of information in its interface. The Interface Traffic tab displays the overall bandwidth of a specific network interface or all network interfaces of the computer the software is running on. Process Traffic on the other hand offers a list of detailed process specific information.

The traffic monitor records traffic from all interfaces and connections by default. Users can enter different bandwidth thresholds and update intervals after they hit the stop button to pause the logging of traffic on the system. The program warns the user visually if the bandwidth threshold is exceeded.

Probably more useful than the overall bandwidth utilization are the information of the process traffic tab. Here you see a list of all running processes on the system with information like their process name and ID, local port as well as memory and cpu usage. Free Process Traffic Monitor furthermore lists the current send and received rate in Kbps for each process. There is unfortunately no option to access the overall traffic utilization of a process over time, as all information are displayed and updated in realtime.

That’s without doubt the biggest weakness of Free Process Traffic Monitor, and definitely inferior to monitoring software like Netlimiter, which despite it’s “lite” state offers those information.

Another missing feature is the ability to configure notifications, alarms and automatic commands like killing a process if it uses up more bandwidth than configured in the application. A third missing option is a filter to only display specific processes and not all of them. The display changes a lot at the default refresh interval of 10 seconds.

Windows users can use Free Process Traffic Monitor for two purposes. First, they can check the overall bandwidth utilization of the system, and second they can use it to check up on a specific process. Both only in realtime.

Windows users can download the free traffic monitor from the developer website. They also need to download and install WinPcap before they can use the software. (via)

The report shows that Netflix accounts for 29.7% of traffic in the US at peak times, and 22% throughout the whole day. Torrenting topped out at 21%, and this time the number is even down from what it was last fall. The report shows Netflix and streaming of audio and video in general to have increased 445 within the last year or so. People are starting to consume their media online instead of watching it on TV.

Hollywood should approve of this. These numbers mean that people are beginning to stream their videos instead of torrenting. Because, of course, we all know that the only reason for bit torrent’s existence is piracy, right? Well, not quite, but that’s what Holly wood as a whole seems to believe. The fact that Netflix is getting bigger and torrenting has taken even a slight downturn should be thrilling.

The numbers show a trend toward more online streaming. This gives ISPs an idea of what they have to look forward to in the future. People are going to want more and more bandwidth as the way they consume entertainment changes.
The problem with this whole thing is that ISPs, mostly due to the few people who do torrent on a regular basis, have begun putting in caps. In the states, even the major ISPS who arguably have lots of bandwidth to spare are debating putting in caps anywhere from 150-250 GB.

Even in Canada, where Netflix has been hugely successful since it arrived in September, some of the major DSL ISPs are debating bandwidth caps of 25 GB. If you’re streaming video, you could go through that in a day. Netflix has already had to lower the quality of its streaming in Canada to deal with the bandwidth caps. Canadian ISPs say that the current infrastructure just isn’t meant to handle the amount of internet traffic people are asking for, and that problem is only going to get worse.

Netflix is becoming a major source of internet traffic in the US and in Canada, at least. The big movie companies are thrilled with this, because it means that their seven year battle to get movies off of the torrent sites might actually be showing results. But, partially as a reaction to that battle, ISPs are now putting in caps to control how much bandwidth one user can get. I’m thinking this isn’t quite the outcome the Hollywood companies expected …

What are your thoughts? Do you have bandwidth caps in place that make it difficult to do everything online that you would like? Do you watch a lot of online media? How much bandwidth do you think you use every month? What do you think would be a good solution for Netflix and the ISPs?

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.

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.

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.

The network monitoring software can be used to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic of selected network adapters and connections. Traffic is shown in graphs and logged in files for further processing. Reports are extensive and provide access to daily, weekly, monthly and custom reports. Even better, reports can be exported which can be useful for book keeping among other things.

A realtime network traffic graph visualizes the incoming and outgoing traffic. Notifications can be used to perform actions under certain 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.

Update: The program sits quietly in the system tray of the operating system for most of the time it is running. A right-click brings up the program menu where you can display or hide the traffic graph on the desktop and access other tools and settings.

The application is offered as a setup and portable version, ideal for users who carry an USB or troubleshooting DVD with them around when they to tech support. The latest program version is compatible with all recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, as well as Windows server variants.

NetWorx 5 has been released in 2009, check out our review of the new version here.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This was basically the termination of my account at that provider and I decided to read the terms of service thoroughly from that time on. Today I read about Verizon’s 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 with 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?

You can adjust the transparency level of the output window or move Netmeter into the system tray. You can also adjust the colors of the graph if you like, the default colors have a nice contrast though.

The most important feature of Netmeter is however not information about 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 same periods.

It also displays the peak upload and download which is the maximum amount of bandwidth 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. You could alternatively just keep it running in the background to check on the stats in regular intervals.

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.