Program to measure downloads per day

[jvalh]

Hello Experts,

I'm sure you know the best prog to do this with Win 7 and it would be
helpful if the prog could log the downloads for each day and keep adding
them until a certain amount of time has passed, e.g. a month.

TIA

 

[Paul]

Hello Experts,

I'm sure you know the best prog to do this with Win 7 and it would be
helpful if the prog could log the downloads for each day and keep adding
them until a certain amount of time has passed, e.g. a month.

TIA

netstat -e

That's a command line tool. It might give you a byte count for the interface.
Maybe some free utility will dress that up nice. Try it from a command prompt.

*******

All you really need to do, is schedule that for execution at shutdown,
so that all the bytes get logged and you have the ability to
sum a total for the month. (The count starts at zero, if you're rebooting
the computer, so you want to capture the last count at shutdown, before
the reboot.) Perhaps something like this would do it. My guess would be
the >> part would append to the end of the log file. If the log file
isn't there, it would be created the first time.

netstat -e >> mylogfile.txt

You might build a script around that, embed a date command, so each entry
is date stamped, and so on.

date /T >> mylogfile.txt
time /T >> mylogfile.txt

Other than that, if you have some network device which is smart,
and is always on, perhaps it has a byte-o-meter in it. My router
has such a display, for whatever that's worth. I don't know how
exactly you transfer that display automatically though. (It's just
HTML, so there may be a way.) Getting the total from the router,
totals the stats for all the computers that download. (It's a
WAN side counter.)

You might want to calibrate that as well. Use Wireshark, send a packet,
then check with netstat -e, that the resulting change makes sense.

As for bandwidth calculations, on something like ADSL, they may be using
PPP stream protocol. Perhaps their byte count includes PPP headers, in which
case their count could be different than the one you collect in Windows.
There is some arithmetic here, that hints at the overhead. Some ADSL uses
PPPOE and some uses PPPOA, and one has more overhead than the other. It
really depends on whether the ISP considers the billed bandwidth to be
at the PPP stream level, or at the application level (the part you get
to use). Perhaps a cable modem and DOCSIS is more transparent ?

http://blog.ioshints.info/2009/03/adsl-overhead.html

I think one of our ISPs here, got accused recently of not counting
the bytes properly, so it's a complicated subject (1,2,3,another,another).
And when you have usage based billing schemes, it's very important to get
the details right.

Paul

 

[jvalh]

netstat -e

That's a command line tool. It might give you a byte count for the
interface.
Maybe some free utility will dress that up nice. Try it from a command
prompt.

*******

All you really need to do, is schedule that for execution at shutdown,
so that all the bytes get logged and you have the ability to
sum a total for the month. (The count starts at zero, if you're rebooting
the computer, so you want to capture the last count at shutdown, before
the reboot.) Perhaps something like this would do it. My guess would be
the >> part would append to the end of the log file. If the log file
isn't there, it would be created the first time.

netstat -e >> mylogfile.txt

You might build a script around that, embed a date command, so each entry
is date stamped, and so on.

date /T >> mylogfile.txt
time /T >> mylogfile.txt

Other than that, if you have some network device which is smart,
and is always on, perhaps it has a byte-o-meter in it. My router
has such a display, for whatever that's worth. I don't know how
exactly you transfer that display automatically though. (It's just
HTML, so there may be a way.) Getting the total from the router,
totals the stats for all the computers that download. (It's a
WAN side counter.)

You might want to calibrate that as well. Use Wireshark, send a packet,
then check with netstat -e, that the resulting change makes sense.

As for bandwidth calculations, on something like ADSL, they may be using
PPP stream protocol. Perhaps their byte count includes PPP headers, in
which
case their count could be different than the one you collect in Windows.
There is some arithmetic here, that hints at the overhead. Some ADSL uses
PPPOE and some uses PPPOA, and one has more overhead than the other. It
really depends on whether the ISP considers the billed bandwidth to be
at the PPP stream level, or at the application level (the part you get
to use). Perhaps a cable modem and DOCSIS is more transparent ?

http://blog.ioshints.info/2009/03/adsl-overhead.html

I think one of our ISPs here, got accused recently of not counting
the bytes properly, so it's a complicated subject (1,2,3,another,another).
And when you have usage based billing schemes, it's very important to get
the details right.

Paul

Phew! Paul, what would we do without you?

Huge thanks!

 

[SC Tom]

Phew! Paul, what would we do without you?

Huge thanks!

Paul has some of the best info available anywhere here, that's for sure. His
posts have helped me more than a few times over the years.

If you want something a little flashier, try BitMeter OS:

http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeterOs

 

[jvalh]

Paul has some of the best info available anywhere here, that's for sure.
His posts have helped me more than a few times over the years.

If you want something a little flashier, try BitMeter OS:

http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeterOs

Thanks Tom.

I'll certainly try it out.

 

[Char Jackson]

Hello Experts,

I'm sure you know the best prog to do this with Win 7 and it would be
helpful if the prog could log the downloads for each day and keep adding
them until a certain amount of time has passed, e.g. a month.

TIA

If you just have a single PC, then measuring your traffic on that PC
is probably the easiest. As others have mentioned, there are some
built in Windows tools, but I use a very handy utility called
Bandwidth Meter, which is a DUMeter clone. Both of those are
shareware, and there's a third choice, a free clone of those programs,
available at sourceforge, although I forgot the name of it.

If you have multiple PC's on a LAN and you transfer data among the
PC's, you'll want to eliminate the intra-LAN traffic from the Internet
traffic, for counting purposes. You can do that if each PC has at
least two NICs by setting up a second LAN, one for Internet traffic
and one for LAN traffic, but it's far easier to accomplish if your
router can be counted on to measure your Internet traffic.

In my case, I have Bandwidth Monitor installed on the PC's, watching
each network interface separately, and I have my router counting bytes
as well. The router counts WAN (Internet) traffic regardless of which
PC or device generates that traffic, so it catches the non-PC devices
like my VoIP adapter, my Internet-ready BluRay player, a couple of
media players, of course all of the PCs, and so on. I'm on Comcast for
my ISP, and my traffic totals as measured by my router perfectly track
the monthly usage amounts reported by Comcast, so it's working great.
I can see daily, weekly, and monthly amounts at a glance.

 

[jvalh]

If you just have a single PC, then measuring your traffic on that PC
is probably the easiest. As others have mentioned, there are some
built in Windows tools, but I use a very handy utility called
Bandwidth Meter, which is a DUMeter clone. Both of those are
shareware, and there's a third choice, a free clone of those programs,
available at sourceforge, although I forgot the name of it.

If you have multiple PC's on a LAN and you transfer data among the
PC's, you'll want to eliminate the intra-LAN traffic from the Internet
traffic, for counting purposes. You can do that if each PC has at
least two NICs by setting up a second LAN, one for Internet traffic
and one for LAN traffic, but it's far easier to accomplish if your
router can be counted on to measure your Internet traffic.

In my case, I have Bandwidth Monitor installed on the PC's, watching
each network interface separately, and I have my router counting bytes
as well. The router counts WAN (Internet) traffic regardless of which
PC or device generates that traffic, so it catches the non-PC devices
like my VoIP adapter, my Internet-ready BluRay player, a couple of
media players, of course all of the PCs, and so on. I'm on Comcast for
my ISP, and my traffic totals as measured by my router perfectly track
the monthly usage amounts reported by Comcast, so it's working great.
I can see daily, weekly, and monthly amounts at a glance.

Thank you Char for that great answer.

I do have two computers linked to the same router but I use only one at
at a time. I'll look up the meters and will let you know how I fare.

Thanks again

 

[Char Jackson]

Thank you Char for that great answer.

I do have two computers linked to the same router but I use only one at
at a time. I'll look up the meters and will let you know how I fare.

Thanks again

You're welcome, and please do report back on what you find. It may
help others who are dealing with the same thing.

 

[jvalh]

You're welcome, and please do report back on what you find. It may
help others who are dealing with the same thing.

I have downloaded and installed a program called:

KTrafficAnalyzer is meant to provide visual feedback of your current
network traffic, similar to tools like DU-Meter. In addition it provides
statistics with total down- and upload sums.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ktr...ses/KTrafficAnalyzer-0.5.4.1.tar.bz2/download

It seems that the tar.bz2 is not for windows7.

 

[jvalh]

I have downloaded and installed a program called:

KTrafficAnalyzer is meant to provide visual feedback of your current
network traffic, similar to tools like DU-Meter. In addition it provides
statistics with total down- and upload sums.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ktr...ses/KTrafficAnalyzer-0.5.4.1.tar.bz2/download


It seems that the tar.bz2 is not for windows7.

Found another freebee:

NetWorx 5.0.7 Download

Tags: internet, lan, network, traffic, bandwith, count, speed, meter,
ethernet

http://downloadnew.org/network-internet/network-monitoring/networx-download-15721.html#dlink

Supported Operating Systems: Windows2000, WinXP, Windows2003, Windows
Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium,
Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista
Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Basic x64, Windows Vista Home Premium x64,
Windows Vista Business x64, Windows Vista Enterprise x64, Windows Vista
Ultimate x64

“NetWorx is a free tool for measuring the speed of all kinds of network
connections (modem, Ethernet, ISDN, DSL, wireless) and bandwidth usage.
The program provides graphic representation of incoming and outgoing
traffic, bandwidth reports and more.” Use download link below to
download NetWorx