Internet Bandwidth Help

[Fri]

Basically, I don't have unlimited internet access, so I try to limit my internet bandwidth usage. But lately I noticed on my internet usage log that, there seems to be some sort of leaking on my tube. I mean, I noticed that even if I leaves my computer for a long time, there seems to be quite a lot of kilobytes going in or out of my PC. It might be just some sort of automatic updating things, but I think I already asked my computer to notify me if it want to update things.

So do any one of you know some sort of program to track what's going in and out for my PC?

[Haven]

Try running AdAware - it's free and it's quite good at rooting out things you don't want to be there.

[Khanderas]

Above is good.
You could also try to pull the actual cord out and see if any programs object.

Example: I noticed that my harddrive suddenly started picking up speed (lots of reads / writes all of a sudden. Feared Hacking / Virus so I pulled the internet plug.

Steam pops up and says the internet connection broke and it could not update anymore.:smallsmile:

[Ashtar]

There's Bandwidth monitoring software that can be found on google in free / paid for versions.

Otherwise, ZoneAlarm is quite good at cutting everything off. Any program requesting internet access goes through ZoneAlarm. I think they've got some monitoring in their suite, too.

[RS14]

Try this (http://www.microsoft.com/DownLoads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f4db40af-1e08-4a21-a26b-ec2f4dc4190d&displaylang=en), if you're running a windows OS. It may be a bit more information than you need.

[B-Man]

What browser do you use for browsing the net? Do you have any RSS feed bookmarks at all? RSS feeds update very frequently, IIRC. Also, do you have an unprotected wireless network in the house? Make sure your neighbours aren't leeching off the network if so.

I have a capped bandwidth with my ISP too. I used to have the 100 GB per month but I had to downgrade to 60 GB. Their tracker tool indicates that I'm going to reach the limit on the 19th, but it's recovering from the downloads I just finished a couple of days ago.

EDIT: For firewalls and whatnot, I suggest going through ZoneAlarm and, if you're using a Windows operating system that isn't Vista, PeerGuardian 2. PeerGuardian blocks out everything else that ZoneAlarm may miss.

[RS14]

EDIT: For firewalls and whatnot, I suggest going through ZoneAlarm and, if you're using a Windows operating system that isn't Vista, PeerGuardian 2. PeerGuardian blocks out everything else that ZoneAlarm may miss.

PeerGuardian isn't really a firewall. I don't think it will be useful here.

[B-Man]

It's true that PeerGuardian isn't really a firewall but blocks stuff from connecting to the internet. It's blocked me from connecting to WoW servers and Firefox sometimes funnily enough.

[Ponce]

What do you mean by "quite a lot of kilobytes?" Bandwidth caps are usually at least a few gigabytes, and if you are only sending and receiving a few kilobytes as background usage in an hour or so, its unlikely there is any program in particular causing it, or that the transfer is significant. Do you have a wireless router? If you do, it is more likely someone is piggy backing on your connection, if you are experiencing a significant bandwidth drain.

[Fri]

What do you mean by "quite a lot of kilobytes?" Bandwidth caps are usually at least a few gigabytes, and if you are only sending and receiving a few kilobytes as background usage in an hour or so, its unlikely there is any program in particular causing it, or that the transfer is significant. Do you have a wireless router? If you do, it is more likely someone is piggy backing on your connection, if you are experiencing a significant bandwidth drain.

... mumble one megabytes or one gigabytes are still 'quite a few kilobytes' mumble