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Topic: Bandwidth Monitor

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 02-08-2007 07:23 AM

I'm thinking about changing my home ADSL contract from one which has no monthly bandwidth limit to one that does. I'm seriously dissatisfied with my current ISP: their service has become very unreliable, their helpline puts you on hold for ages and when you do eventually get through they have no idea when the connection will be back on again.

I've looked around various options, and established that I could cut my annual outgoings on telecoms by about a third if I sign a combined landline phone and ADSL contract. But most of them impose bandwidth limits. The contract I'm thinking most seriously about has a 30gb per month limit, and imposes quite nasty charges if you bust it. The problem is I really don't know what my typical monthly bandwidth usage is, and therefore if this limit would be an issue for me. What I'd like to do is install a monitoring program on my main PC for a week or two, and from there work out what my typical bandwidth usage is.

I've Google searched under 'bandwidth monitor' and seen a few bits of software, but have been unable to find out if there's any program which is (a) free, (b) does not slow Windows down too much, and (c) doesn't also have an adware/spyware function. Any suggestions?

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Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 02-08-2007 01:45 PM

DUmeter www.dumeter.com works really well, but it isn't free - USD$20.00. You get a 30 day trial though, and as I recall it just nags you after that.
There are daily, weekly, monthly, and grand totals built in. Should be what you need to get a handle on your usage. The problem case is where several systems are networked to share internet service, it would be nice if routers had some usage tallies built in.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 02-08-2007 03:43 PM

Many thanks Dave. A week or two is all I need it for, so I'll give it a try. Thinking about this a bit more, I don't think I can come even remotely close to 30gb a month: I don't do online games or download a massive amount of audio, and probably only watch around 20-30 minutes of video on sites like YouTube or Glumbert a month. Other than that it's just normal web and email stuff.

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Mark Hajducki
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 500
From: Edinburgh, UK
Registered: May 2003

posted 02-12-2007 08:20 AM

www.thinkbroadband.com is a good UK based source of information on different providers (although looking through the forums there is no perfect provider).

Some of the providers have are a bit vague about what limit you get, or impose traffic shaping to make the service poor.

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