internet download monitor?

June 16, 2005 5:23 PM

I keep on getting in trouble for going over my daily download limit at work. Can anyone recommend an app which will track how much bandwidth i'm using throughout the day? (for Win XP)

I've looked on the 43folders wiki which has great suggestions about habit breaking, but alongside changing my behaviour I'd really like something that tells me how much I've downloaded.

posted by pipstar to computers & internet (13 comments total)

I refuse to vouch for a lack of (or lots of) spyware for this download, but I remember DLUL meter being very popular for this. Seems to be free, too.
posted by shepd at 5:52 PM on June 16, 2005

Can't you just decide not to watch or listen to anything streaming, and only to surf to text pages (or mostly text pages) like here?
posted by amberglow at 5:53 PM on June 16, 2005

You might also be able to cut down bandwidth by turning on a personal firewall - there may be a lot of programs and OS components routinely accessing the net because they want to, but they don't need to. Set the firewall to block everything and ask permission if anything tries to access the net. That way, you'll quickly weed out the programs wasting bandwidth.
(Depending on your system, this may save very little bandwidth, or a massive amount.)
posted by -harlequin- at 6:32 PM on June 16, 2005

It's actually easy to do.
If you can reboot your computer every morning, at the end of the day (or during the day to check on things) right click on Local Area Connection in your Network Connections folder and select summary. It'll tell you the total data sent and received.

Network and Internet Connections is in the control panel
posted by lockle at 8:04 PM on June 16, 2005

quick google turns up bandwidth monitor pro. It ain't freeware, but you can check it out for 30 days, and if it works for you, well, heck spending $20 is probably better than getting fired.

as a postscript, if they're tracking your bandwidth, they're probably also tracking your usage/surfing -- I would look into checking out web proxies and the like.
posted by fishfucker at 8:09 PM on June 16, 2005

nice weblog, btw.
posted by fishfucker at 8:11 PM on June 16, 2005

I really liked Netstat Live. The same site has some other neat little utilities (a lot more, actually, since last I looked).
posted by odinsdream at 8:35 PM on June 16, 2005

I'm going to check out all these options, but I think what I was hoping would exist, is a Firefox extension which tracks total internet use (with reset / view patterns for specified time period).

It seems like such an obvious extension. Anyway, as caddis said, I should get back to work.
posted by pipstar at 9:46 PM on June 16, 2005

[sorry, removed caddis's "get back to work" comment, didn't mean to make pippa's comment make no sense]
posted by jessamyn at 6:02 AM on June 17, 2005

A firefox extension wouldn't be able to track anything but HTTP traffic, I'd assume. If you want to make sure your estimate isn't too low, you should probably go for one of the tools mentioned above that monitor your entire connection. What's your download limit? Perhaps something is working against you without your knowledge, like Windows' Automatic Updates, or even some kind of spyware.
posted by odinsdream at 6:09 AM on June 17, 2005

In XP, I just go to Settings -> Network Connections -> Local Area Connection. You can reset it by restarting the computer or just disabling then re-enabling the connection.
posted by driveler at 6:43 AM on June 17, 2005

Just monitoring the ethernet packet count on the local area connection might not be very accurate as it doesn't discern between traffic coming from the Internet and traffic from local servers.
posted by bachelor#3 at 6:59 AM on June 17, 2005

Netmeter. Simple, small, fully featured.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:27 PM on June 17, 2005