Netlimiter 2 Monitor
Do you know which applications and processes connect to the Internet on your computer? If you use a firewall chance is that you had to define rules to allow certain programs the right to connect to the Internet.
Sometimes however users think of this as a burden and use low security settings to prevent that they are being pestered all day with questions from their firewall.
The result? All programs can connect freely to the Internet. While most certainly do so legitimately, for instance to download updates or to display websites, others may be sending data about your computer to a server on the Internet or even steal files from it.
NetLimiter Monitor
Netlimiter 2 Monitor is a free software that displays all open processes and applications on the system; it details the incoming and outgoing traffic along with ports, IP addresses and process numbers. That's basically the same number of information that my previous favorite Currports displays but with the addition of traffic which CurrPorts is not displaying.
Another difference is that Netlimiter Monitor has a history feature that displays which applications connected to the Internet in the past on the system. Great for quickly checking out if an app is on the list that should not be there. Note that the history only dates back to the date you have installed Netlimiter on your system and not before that time, and that NetLimiter needs to run for it to record the data.
It's definitely a great application if you want to evaluate the bandwidth usage of a process or software. I used it to keep an eye on Skype to see if my computer was used as a Skype supernode.
Both the Lite and Pro version are not free while NetLimiter Monitor is. The lite version supports setting limits for programs which the Monitor application does not.
The Pro version of Netlimiter adds some interesting functions like Traffic Shaping, Network support, Network Tools like Whois and Traceroute, Remote Administration and Advanced Rules that the two other versions do not support at all.
The program is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit version for all supported versions of the Windows operating system. Note that you need to register the product for free on the developer website.
