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Keep Track of Your Internet Bandwidth Usage

March 10, 2010 — Mrs. Mecomber

I found out about this handy little program from Kim Komando. By the way, if you don’t listen to her radio show or get her emails, I suggest you do! When i was a new computer user, some ten years ago now, her show was immensely helpful. Today, she discusses less about computers and more about computer gadgets (such as iPhones, iPods, etc, which are useless to me), but I still glean a lot of good stuff from the broadcasts.

Anyway, this latest download is called AnalogX NetStat Live. It will monitor and measure your bandwidth– incoming and outgoing– as well as CPU usage. This is a great way to keep tabs on your bandwidth usage, especially if you have an ISP that charges by bandwidth or gives you a monthly cap, this is what you need to measure your usage. You’d have to install the NetStat Live on all computers on the network, and total up the Incoming Totals and Outgoing Totals across all computers. That will tell you the bandwidth you’ve used. The software is free.

Posted in desktop utilities, free programs, Internet, surveillance. Tags: bandwidth usage, ISP. 1 Comment »

New Netgear Router Will Monitor Bandwidth

August 17, 2009 — Mrs. Mecomber

I am happy to see this news from Netgear, although the news about bandwidth usage caps is disheartening.Here’s more information from the Netgear site:

If you haven’t heard of “Internet throttling” by now, you will soon in all likelihood. Major cable-based ISPs are considering (if not implementing) hard bandwidth caps on their users each month, which is really putting devout Netflix streamers and Hulu watchers in a bind. After all, if you get all of your TV/entertainment from the web, it doesn’t take long to suck down an incredible amount of bits and bytes.

While Netgear certainly can’t make those guys have a change of heart, it can help users stuck behind those walls keep tabs on how much they’ve used. Many people have argued that the companies enforcing the caps should provide consumers with a way to monitor throughput, but until that happens, it looks like the burden of responsibility is on you. In August (meaning next month), Netgear is planning to ship its WNDR3700 wireless router in America, which will be the first from the company to actually show users how much data they’ve used during a certain window of time.

I have DSL; I sure hope I don’t see any bandwidth caps anytime soon. Everyone in the family uses the computer ALL the time, for everything from research for term papers to weather videos, to movies and viral videos, to Internet marketing and working. A cap would really stifle our computing.

But even if my ISP never caps anything, I’m still very interested in our bandwidth usage, just from curiosity. I wouldn’t go out and buy a new router for that reason, but Netgear speculates that they may include this bandwidth-tracking technology in future firmware updates for people who already own Netgear routers.

It’s an interesting development, one that I will be keeping my eye on.

Posted in computers, electronics, Internet, news, surveillance. Tags: bandwidth usage, ISPs, NetGear, routers. Comments Off »

Some ISPs Capping Usage

August 25, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

I have Verizon as my ISP. I’ve been pleased with the service, but for the past two months or so, I;ve noticed that I often get slight “disconnects.” I do not download videos or music (although my husband listens to music). The odd thing is that my connection is almost always interrupted, and constantly so, when I drop Entrecards. Weird.

Anyway, I saw news today that some ISPs are starting to cap usage. Remember those early days of Internet service, where you were charged by the hour? I can’t imagine some businesses would be dumb enough to return to those days, they were as annoying as nose blackheads, but there have been stupid CEOs before, and no doubt there are stupid CEOs now.

The phone company, Frontier Communications Corp., is one of several Internet service providers that are moving to curb the growth of traffic on their networks, or at least make the subscribers who download the most pay more.

This could have consequences not just for consumers – who would have to learn to watch how much data their Internet use entails – but also for companies that hope to make the Internet a conduit for movies and other content that comes in huge files.

As you can see, ISPs aren’t intending to cap time usage, but bandwidth usage. This is unwise. Bandwidth usage is not something you can really control. What if Aunt Bertha’s anniversary photos roll in unexpectedly, using up 10% of your bandwidth for the month? Too many uncontrollable variables. But unfortunately, I expect ISPs to start doing this.

If an ISP would offer “unlimited” usage (by changing nothing as it stands right now), they would make a ton of business. We’ll wait and see how this works out.