Home internet nowadays comes with a quota of how much bandwidth you can use in a month. It’s unavoidable and if you happen to exceed that quota, your internet provider might charge you a premium, or slow your speeds down to dial-up levels. If you don’t want this to happen to you, then you should monitor your internet usage.
Here are 5 free programs for your Windows PC to help monitor your Internet usage. This is great for readers who are on a student budget, studying abroad on a limited mobile broadband plan. Those broadband plans normally have a quota that includes both upload and download bandwidths and we’ve tested these 5 programs to see how they fare.
Once you install NetWorx, it will track all your Internet usage with an icon on the taskbar. You can click and launch the program to view usage graphs of each day. What’s good about NetWorx is the ability to set a daily, weekly or monthly quota to track uploads or downloads or both. You can also set the on/off peak usage that some internet providers have and it’ll warn you if you’re about to reach the limit.
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This program comes with a desktop widget meter graph of your download and upload speeds. Similar to NetWorx, you can add a quota limit — in the case of BitMeter 2, it is named ISP Restrictions. Once set, it’ll tell you how many days and bandwidth you can use before reaching your limit. You can also view your usage stats that can be sorted by hours, days, and months.
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This program permanently sits on your taskbar showing upload and download speeds. To enable this, right click on your taskbar and under Toolbars click on NetSpeedMonitor. Apart from showing connection speeds, it can track your daily usage. You can see track your daily or monthly usage, and also see what programs are connected to the internet. Unlike the other programs though, there is no quota reminder.
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This program has a very clean user interface that is easy to understand. Upon installing it, you’ll have to provide an email address to register for a free product code. After that, you can begin tracking your internet usage and even see what programs are connected to the internet. It also allows you to set your monthly quota with reminders sent to you as you near the limit.
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ISP Monitor is a lightweight program to easily track your daily or monthly internet usages. You’ll have to set it up first by changing the adapter settings under Settings > Traffic Monitor > Adapterto choose between a wired or Wi-Fi connection. Unlike the previous programs, you cannot set a quota reminder. It has easy-to-read logs where you can instantly see your daily upload and download usage.
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