Bandwidth meters show no activity
April 15, 2011 7:23 PM   Subscribe

Bandwidth meters don't detect any network traffic. What's happening (or not)?

I have installed (at two different times) Bitmeter and Netmeter on my laptop to monitor internet usage. Neither of them show anything. There's not much to configure in Netmeter, so I can't have configured it wrong. It's the one currently running. It's as though there was no network.
The laptop connects to the internet through a wireless network and then through a router.
I have Bitmeter running on a desktop connected to the router through an ethernet cable and it's fine.
I'm so flummoxed with the laptop that I don't even know what else to say to describe the problem. Do I misunderstand the way these things work?
Will provide further details on request. Thanks.
posted by feelinggood to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)
 
You've probably got it monitoring the traffic on your unused ethernet interface, rather than on your wireless interface.
posted by mhoye at 7:32 PM on April 15, 2011


Make sure your laptop is connected to the wireless network before you start up the bandwidth monitor program, so it can detect that network, rather than defaulting to something wrong like the unused ethernet LAN.
posted by exphysicist345 at 10:34 PM on April 15, 2011


Response by poster: Bitmeter actually lists (unlike Netmeter) all the adapters it's monitoring. There are 34 adapters of one kind and another. They are all checked. Still no activity.
posted by feelinggood at 3:55 AM on April 16, 2011


What OSes are you running on the desktop and the laptop?
Win7 and Vista aren't always perfect about detecting when a program needs administrative permissions. I think Wireshark has a similar problem, being able to see the network interfaces but not read anything from them unless you remember to start it using "Run as Administrator".
posted by marakesh at 11:25 PM on April 16, 2011


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