Tip #3686 - BitMeter II
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BitMeter
II
Do you ever notice
that your Internet connection is different throughout the day or week?
Do you download files and surf the Web faster later on at night, rather
than earlier in the day? Have you ever called your Internet Service Provider
(ISP) to tell them you're offline or your connection is painfully slow,
only to have it bounce back up to an acceptable level by the time you
get off the phone? How do you keep tabs on your Internet connection speeds
(for example, bandwidth?) I mean, especially, how do you do it without
bringing pricey software in to do the job?
Well, this week's
download may be the answer to all those questions. It allows you to monitor
your network's bandwidth and monitor it over time, which enables it to
give you a great amount of detail, concerning your Internet connection
and the speeds it’s operating at.
BitMeter II
is a bandwidth monitoring application that runs in the background,
logging important and statistical data, regarding your network's Internet
connection speeds. It’s easy to use, yet its robust interface gives
users exactly what they want and at a level they can handle. It's nothing
overly complicated or “out of the box,” but as you gain an
understanding of the options available and what they do, you will start
to make more and more of them work for you.
Here are some of the
features you get with BitMeter II:
- Audio notification
at regular (configurable) time intervals. Different tones are played
according to your current upload or download speed (tone boundaries
are also configurable).
- Audio notification
each time a certain amount of data is transferred (uploaded, downloaded
or both).
- Animated System
Tray icon shows upload and download speeds.
- Check for new
versions (with auto-check option and proxy support).
- Select any combination
of network cards to monitor or ignore.
- Configurable graph
scale. Set to any value or set to auto-adjust according to your speed.
- Connection Speed
Helper.
- Option to display
current graph maximum on screen.
- Change units used
in readout (Kb, KB, Mb, MB).
- Change graph type
(bar or line graph).
- Interval bars
with adjustable time period.
- Adjustable scroll
interval (anywhere between one and 60 seconds).
- Save favorite
color combinations for later use or use one of the preconfigured color
schemes.
- Configure System
Tray tooltip information (including speeds and day totals).
- Show or hide readout
area or adjust its font size.
- Auto-start option
for current user or all users.
- Manual and automatic
backup options of configuration and traffic history information.
And that’s not
all! BitMeter II even has a Web based interface, compliments of the integrated
Web server that allows a user to log in via the Internet and view your
connection speed remotely, with all the options one would have if you
were sitting in front of the machine. (You can watch the demo here).
There is a built in
Connection Speed calculator as well, which helps you calculate how long
a potential download might take. How cool is that?!
BitMeter II also has
a stopwatch, which can be configured to keep track of different things,
such as your total online activity. Or, it can be filtered by certain
criteria.
And of course, I would
be remiss without describing the floating information window that gives
you real time information at any moment just by hovering your mouse pointer
over it.
You can log all your
accumulated Internet data and it can be viewed in a number of different
styles, including bar and line graphs. It even shows numerical data that
can easily be imported by a spreadsheet program.
All of this and there
is a great Help
file too. It will walk you through and explain every single minute setting
within BitMeter II and how to use it.
Note: BitMeter
II does require version 1.1 or later of the Microsoft .NET Framework to
be installed. This can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft
Web site.
With security, extreme
logging features, a Web interface and complete control over every aspect
of the program and how it acts, this is the bandwidth monitoring application
you have been searching for!
You can download BitMeter
II here.
~ Chad Stelnicki
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