NetSpeedMonitor

Knowing whether a connection is actually doing anything is a surprisingly persistent need. Something is downloading and nobody knows what, a page is slow and it is unclear whether traffic is moving at all, or a metered connection is being consumed by something in the background. NetSpeedMonitor answers that by putting the current upload and download rates directly on the taskbar.

The NetSpeedMonitor appeal is the placement rather than the measurement. Numbers in a window require opening a window, and numbers sitting permanently next to the clock are seen without anybody deciding to look.

What it reports, beyond the two numbers

The rate display is the visible part and the accumulated totals are the useful one. NetSpeedMonitor records daily, monthly and session figures in a small local database, so they persist between restarts.

That matters on any connection with a limit attached. Knowing that this month has consumed a certain amount, three weeks in, is the difference between managing an allowance and discovering it at the end.

The connection list

A detail window goes further, listing the current connections along with which process opened each one and where it is going. That is what turns the question of why the connection is busy into an answer, because the process name is usually enough to identify the culprit.

Per-interface selection means the wired adapter and the wireless one are monitored separately, which matters on a laptop that uses both and where only one of them is metered.

The problem you will meet first

Here is the decisive fact, and it belongs near the top rather than buried in the limitations.

NetSpeedMonitor works by adding a toolbar to the taskbar, and the newest generation of the taskbar removed support for third-party toolbars entirely. Not restricted, not deprecated, removed. On such a system the program cannot do the one thing it exists to do, and no setting or workaround inside the application changes that.

On the previous generation of the taskbar it still works, with one obstacle. The installer checks the system version and refuses to proceed on anything newer than it expects, which is worked around by adjusting the compatibility settings on the installer before running it. That is a well-known step and it resolves the installation, provided the taskbar in question still supports toolbars at all.

So the practical question is not whether you want it. It is whether the machine you are installing it on can host it.

What to use where it cannot run

For a current system the whole NetSpeedMonitor approach has to change, since nothing can occupy taskbar space that no longer accepts occupants.

GlassWire is the usual answer, monitoring traffic per application with a graph over time and attributing every connection to the program that made it. It occupies a window rather than the taskbar, and it answers the question this was asked more thoroughly.

Where the requirement is deciding which programs may reach the network rather than watching what they do, simplewall handles that side by blocking rather than reporting.

And for the deeper question of what is actually being sent rather than how much, Wireshark shows the traffic itself, which is a considerably heavier instrument for a considerably more specific question.

Conclusion

NetSpeedMonitor did something simple extremely well, which was putting two numbers where you would see them without looking for them. The accumulated totals and the per-process connection list gave it more depth than the taskbar display suggested, and it asked almost nothing of the machine.

Its problem is not quality but foundation. The taskbar mechanism it was built on has been removed from newer systems, and the program was abandoned long before that happened. On an older machine that still supports toolbars it remains worth the compatibility adjustment. On anything current, the same job needs a tool that lives in a window instead.