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Summary: It's possible, even easy, to monitor the amount of bandwidth a computer is using. It's much more difficult to control. I have 3 kids, each has his own computer, I have a laptop, and we are all sharing an ADSL connection. Sometimes one of the kids hogs the network and everybody else does not get any bandwidth. And I sometimes want to lockout one of the kids from the internet so he will turn to other activities ... such as his homework. There's good news and there's bad news. Bandwidth is a lot like having kids: monitoring is easier than controlling. • Let's start out with the good news. The ability to monitor your network and a lot of other items is built in to Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT in something called "Performance Monitor". Run performance monitor by pressing Start, selecting Run, typing "perfmon" and pressing OK. You should get something that looks somewhat like this:
Right click in the empty chart area and select Add Counters... and you should see something like this:
The Performance Object dropdown lists several objects on your computer whose performance can be measured. The Processor, for example, is one. In that list select Network Interface, and the result looks like this:
The first list at the bottom of the dialog allows you to select which counters relating to that object you want to monitor. The second list allows you to select which object if there are more than one. In this example we'll select my "Intel Pro" network card on the right, and "Bytes Total/Sec" on the left. Press Add and Close and you'll see perfmon start to report the total bytes traversing the network card over time. After a little while in my example, it looks like this:
Perfmon is an incredibly powerful monitoring tool. There are lots of things available to monitor, and many display options. I encourage you to play around with it some. Of special note is the Select Counters from Computer option in the Add Counters dialog above. Perfmon allows you to monitor the performance of another Windows XP, 2000 or NT computer remotely, across your LAN. This means, for example, if someone on your network is hogging all the bandwidth then you can monitor each machine remotely in real time to see just who that might be. Monitoring is fairly easy. In addition to Perfmon there are certainly many third party applications that will allow you to do the same with different display and even triggered actions. Control, on the other hand, is the bad news. True control of something shared like a DSL connection can be done, but it gets costly. It's typically performed by high end routers that allow you to specify, often in great detail, how the bandwidth should be allocated or prioritized. Unfortunately that's usually out of reach of the most home LANs. In all honesty if this were my situation I'd just make sure the router was in arms-reach of my desk, and the cables well labeled. Then I'd physically unplug the connection for any computers who's users I felt needed to spend more time in the "real world". But that's just me. Related Links:
• Recent Comments
How can I use http://bandwidthcontroller.com/index.html thc Posted by: Rez at February 19, 2005 10:26 AMInstead of physically unplugging the router connection belonging to the person who you think needs to spend more time "in the real world", you might be able (depending on your router) to allow connections during a particular time period only. Posted by: Qrystal at October 5, 2005 06:42 AMSearching a whole day for this tool on internet!
Hi, this looks very helpful but ever time i try and add a computer for example \\max it say: Unable to connect to machine. anyidea on how to over come this? Thanks Si Posted by: Si at February 20, 2006 10:00 AMGPL alternative for Linux and other POSIX oses: Hi, this looks very helpful but ever time i try and add a computer for example \\max it say: Unable to connect to machine. anyidea on how to over come this? yea i face the same thing Posted by: bluehammer at April 21, 2006 02:33 AMI visited a web page that showed percent of bandwith used at the top. I would like to add something like that to my site, but have been looking for hours and now am posting here. Do I need to have a router that logs that info ? I don't. Posted by: Dan Schwartz at June 18, 2006 08:47 AMOf special note is the Select Counters from Computer option in the Add Counters dialog above. Perfmon allows you to monitor the performance of another Windows XP, 2000 or NT computer remotely, across your LAN. This means, for example, if someone on your network is hogging all the bandwidth then you can monitor each machine remotely in real time to see just who that might be HOW DO THIS WORK? Posted by: SCHALK at May 28, 2007 06:51 AMThanks, very descriptive and helpful information that you posted. Posted by: Christian at July 18, 2007 01:27 PMI have found the perfect tool for controlling my kids time on the computer. It's called "Enuff". You can control exactly how much time on the computer and when and who, and even what, and it can all be controlled from your machine over a network. You pay for it once, but it really works well and is simple to use. Posted by: Leo Hartas at February 21, 2008 02:34 AMPost a comment on "Can I monitor, or control, the bandwidth used on my home network?":
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