With Orange having implemented their Fair Use Policy (FUP), it is advisable for us, Internet users to monitor our bandwidth usage. No, we are not going to take out a notebook and track every download we ever made! For this task, we will a small application called NetMeter.

As you can see from above, NetMeter is really easy to understand. It shows your current download and upload speeds, as well as your Total Downloads (TDL) and Uploads (TUL) for the month.

Basically, you just need to download the program and install it. It’s freeware! After that, it’ll silently run in the background (3.3MB usage on average), monitoring your usage in real time. It comes with dynamic icons to show you your uploads and downloads. (Sorry for the dark picture, but the icon is dark red when there is no usage, and fills up with green when usage is detected.)

NetMeter also comes with a Totals window which gives you loads of information about your usage.

Since I just started using it, my totals are pretty low, but from the window above, you can see how extensive the totals given are. The best one is Projected tab, which foresees your usage! You can also have Daily, Weekly, Monthly reports about your usage. Very useful if your ISP starts messing with you saying you downloaded too much. Send them the monthly report! 😛

Another useful feature I found in NetMeter is the Traffic Volume Limit option (grayed above). You can input your limits, and it tells you how much you have left. It may even alert you when you are going to exceed your limits (FUP?). We still don’t know what is the Download limit according to the FUP, but if it becomes known, that Traffic Volume Limit will be useful!

You can also have the main window opened at all times to monitor your speed if you want. NetMeter includes options for transparency and click through. The options panel is extensive and filled with choices. You can track all network interfaces, or all of them (eg. Only track Internet traffic on your modem, wireless, ethernet or all of them).

Well, that was me watching a YouTube video. It was a 4 min video, and my usage increased by around 5 MB. This means that I can only watch 200 such YouTubes videos in a month on a 1GB cap limit, assuming that I don’t browse and don’t download anything else.

Overall, I found the application very friendly to use, and provides very useful features for monitor your traffic speed and usage in general. Give it a try. 🙂