Broadband Meters That Work

annieee

Hello all,

I have been throttled by BT as I have breached the download cap/limit. I need a broadband network meter that will show activity over the last day. I can't go over 5GB a day or they throttling my internet severely. I would like an alert when I breach 4GB in one 24hr day.

I downloaded the free BitMeter but it is giving my very unreliable statistics. For example for an hour where I was just checking my email and downloading nothing (not even youtube) it gave a readout of 9.1GB use.

any help on a useful app that can give reliable network activity and send me an alert when my DL's breach 4GB in one 24hr day.

cheers

Annieeeeeeee

Stevek101

Get a linksys router (something like this http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=314078) and install DD-WRT (check here to ensure router compatibility http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/dd-wrt/hardware.html) firmware. You get this lovely chart for all the traffic on your LAN.

annieee

Cheers... but I would prefer not to have to get a new router. It becomes quite expensive then.

At the minute I am using BT Voyager Router.

jor el

You need DUMeter. It ain't free though.

Pyro Boy

Have you tried Netmeter? http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item14
I haven't used it in a while but it is free and was good the last time I tried it :rolleyes:

Here is a review of it http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/monitor-bandwidth-usage-with-net-meter.html

Edit:
If you are a mac user SurplusMeter is good too http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20884/surplusmeter

annieee

Thanks for that.

I saw Netmeter but I didn't think it gave daily statistics but it does. It also has an alert notification when I get close to my ISP's cap limit.

I'll downloaded it and so far so good.

cheers

Annieee

vibe666

something like that will be okay if you only have the one pc on your connection and nothing else.

if you are the sort of person likely to go over your limits though, the minute you start to use other devices like games consoles or extra pc's you'll need something at the heart of your network (i.e. your router/modem as stevek says) to keep track of exactly what's what.

the linksys routers are great, assuming you put a good 3rd party firmware on them like dd-wrt or (my preferred choice) tomato and will keep an accurate record of every kb that passes to and from your modem on a daily/weekly/monthly basis with all sorts of pretty graphs.

don't just buy the first one you see though, as not all of them are compatible with 3rd party firmwares and the default linksys firmware is brutal. someone here can advice you further if you decided to go for it or you can find out for yourself on the wikipedia page for the router (it's the linksys wrt54g) but it's pretty heavy reading getting up to speed before you buy the right one.

BlackWizard

I used to love DUMeter but I moved job and couldn't take it with me.

I got a demo of it now. previously I used netmeter but it doesn't separate internet traffic from LAN traffic.

Where is the setting on DUMeter that creates this separation? I can't for the life of me find it

Wetbench4

Stevek101 wrote: »

Get a linksys router (something like this http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=314078) and install DD-WRT (check here to ensure router compatibility http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/dd-wrt/hardware.html) firmware. You get this lovely chart for all the traffic on your LAN.

I have the WRT54GS ver6.0 with standard firmware but i want to upgrade to the DD-WRT and when i go onto that site you mentioned and go to the download section, there's a million different options.I thought I was on the right track looking for the download but i eventually came to two zips, killer and prep i think. So i downloaded those , unzipped and they are .bin files so now im confused. I'm fairly handy with pc's but that has to be one of the most confusing sites i've been on. So any help from yourself stevek or anyone would be greatly appreciated.

vibe666

righto, as far as I know, only dd-wrt micro will work on a wrt54gs v6 router, and it can be a bit of a bugger to get on if you've not done it before. it's certainly not as easy as flashing it anyway, although its far from impossible, i've done one myself in the past for someone, it's just a bit of a pain.

if you still REALLY want to do it, then you'll need to follow the guide on this page EXACTLY as they are laid out.

http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owbase/ow.asp?WRT54G5_CFE#h10

i'll warn you now though, if you don't follow the instructions to the letter, you'll likely brick your router and chances are you'll need to find someone with a jtag cable to unbrick it, or just buy a new one (if this happens get yourself the wrt54gl from komplett next time, it's a lot simpler).

mind you, if you find it easy and want a really awkward one to re-flash, get yourself a "la fonera" fon router, that fecker took me a couple of hours to figure out the first time till i got my head round it.

Stevek101

I installed the mini version as above. As has been said follow the instructions word for word take it very handy. Then make sure you plug the router in first then internet in afterward I made that mistake and though I had broke the router