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 ?
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 6
Throttle Bandwidth of Firefox and IE
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.
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 8
Bandwidth Monitor
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.
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 10
When Unlimited means limited
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.
- Author: Martin Brinkmann
- Comments: 4
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.
