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Monitoring bandwidth usage
Redlance
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
With Comcasts recent move of limiting bandwidth to 250GB I'm looking for a way to monitor the bandwidth usage on my PC. I know you can go into the account and look it up but I don't have the information (Landlords are letting me use their connection) and just want to make sure I keep my bandwidth use low enough so I don't have them go over. I have windows Vista Premium if anyone knows of a way to monitor that comes with windows , otherwise any program suggestions would be helpful.
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http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/index.htm
I used 120gbs of bandwidth last month. I am currently at about 20gbs for Oct.
I could easily use a few gig more than my allotted 10GB/month, but I don't think I could see myself going over, say 30 gig per month. The volumes of data that you guys download just boggles my mind in that I don't think I could ever dream up enough things to download in one month that would come even close.
How much of that data do you actually keep?
Yeah, I just got my cap bumped from 15GB to 40GB, and that's huge for me. I guess I can finally buy games over Steam, but that's about all I can imagine doing to make use of that bandwidth, without seriously altering what I do with my internet.
But the OP is sharing a connection, so it's not like he actually has 250GB to himself. He really is obligated to at least ensure he isn't chewing up his landlords bandwidth.
Well, I don't have services like Netflix or Hulu available (I live in New Zealand, hence the cap), or even most music streaming services. The only things that really chew up my bandwidth are usually one-offs: downloading all the patches for a game after re-installing it, downloading software packages, games off Steam etc. And I'm used to not buying my games online, since in the past a 5gig+ download simply was not feasible for me.
I was just pointing out that personally, 40GB is a lot to me. I appreciate that if you're not living in the 3rd world of internet connectivity you'd be accustomed to using more.
That's all I was getting at with my initial post. I mean seriously your probably going to use a 1/3 or so of that cap I'd bet unless you go crazy with the Torrents.
One fucking night.
So just tonight if I were to keep doing it through all the month I would be running at 15GB/month.
How do you 10GB/Mo people live?
Technically it's not bandwidth limiting. Bandwidth limiting would just be a limit on your maximum speed.
To monitor downloads, I use GKrellm. But that's only available for Linux/Unix/Macs.
For Windows, there are a few freeware options. NetLimiter 2 Monitor is one, NetMeter and FreeMeter are others.
You can exceed the cap, but once you do it gets slow as fuck or you need to pay more.
At least, that's the way it is on my service.
12gb cap sucks.
Don't feel too bad, buddy. Not all of America gets awesome bandwidth. Mine's slow, and I have a cap that's either 5gb/month or 10gb/month, I can't remember which. Of course, it's the absolute cheapest money can buy (aside from dialup), so that might factor into it.
How the hell did you use that much bandwidth in one night? I do that same shit every day (and more, plus I share the line), except I have no idea what a FAH thingy is. Either something's wrong over there, or I'm exceeding my monthly cap by like 400% every month without knowing or hearing about it at all.
....anyway, sort of on topic again, is there a linux version of this Netmeter and stuff like that?
(edit): So, now that I think about it a bit, 500megs isn't that crazy. I'd expect it to me more like 100-200, but still.
(edit again): And according to the installation notes, netmeter's supposed to work pretty well with Wine, so hmm.
And 500 MB/night is pretty damn steep. Between playing online games, watching youtube videos, listening to vent and general browsing stuff, I use an average of ~200 a day. That stuff is usually running for 6-10 hours. So uh... you may want to check it over a few days and see if it evens out.
Now it makes a little more sense.
One of our customers did it in a couple of days by using a pair of IP based security cameras and streaming it from his home to his work where the NVR was.
Do those network meters know to exclude local file transfers (file sharing/network streaming) or is it just any activity on your NIC?
I don't use as much at home since I don't sit at the computer all evening, but I was surprised how much I used just sitting here.
For that kind of application bandwidth optimization is that last thing you try to do. Image quality and framerates are key. Optimizing for bandwidth would be a sacrifice of the more important factors.
I actually completely forgot about this sort of stuff. It just isn't a viable option for me (or just about anyone else here) and so, although I've seen it brought up before, I just ignore it, forget about it, and do whatever I can to make every bit count. Hell, I haven't updated any of my Steam games in ages because I just run it in offline mode. I guess if using such a service as netflix wouldn't use up 1/10 of my allocated data, then I probably would use services like it a lot more often.
We don't really... I used to use an outbound firewall to monitor and grant very few programs internet access. Then I use adblock+ with firefox which helps a bit (seriously! fucking 1mb WoW ad on the news page of PA! What the fuck guys?!). And then we get a group of friends together who like the same television shows, one show each every week, and then get together and have a big swap fest. I know that isn't really legal, but hey, if it was viable for me to use legal streaming services I would.
Yeah, back home the price is $100/GB you go over your cap. My mum refuses to change ISPs because this one is local... Where I am now, which is a kind of privately owned student accommodation thing, they just cut you off until you top up your account. The top up process isn't automated either. You go and give them money, they put it into the system, then the IT lady has to manually top up your account (you know, not as soon as it goes into the system, just whenever she fucking feels like it). Fucking handy for when you get towards the end of the month, you use the rest of your data up on a friday night, and then want to do some work on a remote server on the weekend, but can't because there's no one in to top up your fucking account... grr... I'd love to be able to choose an actual ISP, but my only options are wireless (which is expensive as hell anyway) or this, as they have some weird internal fucking phone system that won't work with a DSL modem.
Yeah, I wouldn't be so pissed if I wasn't paying $50/month for this shit.
Television, movies and music all seem to be moving to an internet based distribution model, but ISPs here aren't doing anything to help make it affordable for us. And this shits me. We're going to get left behind.
[Sorry for the overall rantyness of this post. I know people don't like to listen to someone complain, but I just get riled up about this. Maybe I should write a big letter to someone at Internode... at least they kinda seem to be all for improving the standard of net access here]
The situation down here is depressing.
Isn't it just? I think I'm going to have to go buy some chocolate or something...
I downloaded like 9 different version of Linux trying to find a good one to boot from my USB drive. I settled with the ubuntu 8.10 beta to try out usb-creator. I swear I'm going to end up killing this poor $10 flash drive.
I feel your pain. I am also stuck on a local ISP for the same reasons, and although they have pretty good service, they are a bit overpriced (overpriced for Australia, which is ridiculous to begin with). It is so sad we are being left behind in Australia.
This month my service has an unlimited cap. Already I have downloaded 72.5GB (well, WELL over regular limit) and have the rest of the month still. It was so easy, but I did nothing just for the sake of it. That is how much I would want to use normally. I don't even download HD movies (don't get me started on HD, we still don't have it where I live), the most I ever watch is something on youtube once in a while (*cough* maybe some other specialty streaming websites also :winky:). As you said, most media is moving to the internet and we are going to be fucked if nobody does anything. We pay top dollar for restricted and comparitivly slow internet. That is bullshit.
Blame Telstra.
Here are the monthly wholesale ADSL1 port costs that ISPs have to pay. This is just to get access to the port in the exchange:
256/64 - $22.00
512/128 - $27.00
512/512 - $50.25
1536/256 - $34.00
8192/384 - $52.00
These prices are ex-GST.
So, if somebody has a 1500/256 connection and they are paying $50/month, they are actually getting a good deal. That's $45/month ex-GST, so the ISP is only charging $11 for:
- The cost of the AGVC/VLAN link from the exchange to their own routers.
- The data costs (both domestic and international). These costs generally work out to be around $1/GB, based on typical usage patterns.
- All the other costs in providing their services and running their business (servers, staff, rent, etc).
We have a bad deal here in Australia, but the ISPs certainly aren't to blame. In fact, most ISPs price their plans so that they run at a small loss if people use their entire data quota, and then make money solely from the customers who don't use up their quota.