From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

I have a network utility monitor that shows me when there is up- or
download traffic on my internet (wifi link). The one I use is BitMeter2,
but I imagine there are many such. It has an audio option - a beep every
x bytes up- or downloaded; I have this on (with x set to 100 kB). [Don't
use this unless you live alone - it irritates some people!]

I find it useful - to monitor things I've instigated such as downloads
(I get some idea of when they start and stop, and how fast the link is),
and also it tells me when something is unexpectedly down- or uploading.

When this latter happens, I'd like to know what is doing so. I normally
expect Thunderbird, Edge, occasionally AVG, and Windows itself. I've
tried opening task manager and clicking on the Networking column to sort
by that, but that doesn't really tell me. (Also, if I was paranoid ... sometimes I think the burst of activity stops when I open task manager!
But I don't think that's really the case.)

What I'd like is something I could invoke - say from a pinned taskbar
thing - when there's a flurry, which would list what's using the link,
at a fairly high level, such as Thunderbird, Edge, AVG, etc., not down
to the sub-sub-sub-process level. Ideally, dynamic.

Suggestions? I do have the Nirsoft and Sysinternals suites (and the NirLauncher), and have tried a few likely-looking ones there, but they
were either not quite what I wanted, or gave too much information. But
one of those may be suitable and I just haven't picked the right one.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

It's not the pace of life that concerns me, it's the sudden stop at the end.

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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

On Sat, 9/5/2026 11:15 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

I have a network utility monitor that shows me when there is up- or
download traffic on my internet (wifi link). The one I use is BitMeter2,
but I imagine there are many such. It has an audio option - a beep every
x bytes up- or downloaded; I have this on (with x set to 100 kB). [Don't
use this unless you live alone - it irritates some people!]

I find it useful - to monitor things I've instigated such as downloads
(I get some idea of when they start and stop, and how fast the link is),
and also it tells me when something is unexpectedly down- or uploading.

When this latter happens, I'd like to know what is doing so. I normally expect Thunderbird, Edge, occasionally AVG, and Windows itself. I've
tried opening task manager and clicking on the Networking column to sort
by that, but that doesn't really tell me. (Also, if I was paranoid ... sometimes I think the burst of activity stops when I open task manager!
But I don't think that's really the case.)

What I'd like is something I could invoke - say from a pinned taskbar
thing - when there's a flurry, which would list what's using the link,
at a fairly high level, such as Thunderbird, Edge, AVG, etc., not down
to the sub-sub-sub-process level. Ideally, dynamic.

Suggestions? I do have the Nirsoft and Sysinternals suites (and the NirLauncher), and have tried a few likely-looking ones there, but they
were either not quite what I wanted, or gave too much information. But
one of those may be suitable and I just haven't picked the right one.

The thing is, the activity is fairly complex, for the human eye to eyeball,
and tools like this are "too much for a small screen". To use this to its
best extent, I would have to rotate a 4K screen into portrait mode so
I could see all of it. This shows when a connection is going through
its "2 minutes to oblivion" thing, the connection will change colour before
it disappears. The packets sent and received are necessary, to note whether there is currently traffic or not. This is "too busy" a display for
your purposes, you'd want a filtered version of this. But, we have to
include it, as it covers everyones tent.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/tcpview

There are some FOSS things with names I can't remember, which produce a
similar output. Netstat ? Dunno. You can see where TCPView got its role model from.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/netstat-command-linux/

Wireshark can give a detailed trace. The Wireshark PCAP, feeding a program
you wrote your own self, could allow you to tailor the information gathered
a bit better. TCPView has too many "dead" or "inactive" things, to be an attractive summary (you can click the traffic column, to cause the busy connections to float to the top). The capture agent bundled with Wireshark,
on a Mac computer, would have a name other than winPCAP...

winPCAP ---- Wireshark display ---- <eyeballs>

winPCAP ---- <home brew prog> ---- <eyeballs> # You could use the captured packet stream
# to build your own summary. Remember, AI's write
# code, but you need a whip and chair to get a result.

Microsoft has their own version of Wireshark, and it is based on ETW packet capture. The Sysinternals Process Monitor, also had ETW network packets added to its trace, but not all my copies of that here, seem to have that, and
the reverse lookup doesn't work too well there (you see more akamai CDN references than should really be in such a trace). Depending on which
OS you're running, you may need an older version of some of the
Sysinternals ones, to support Windows 7. That means going to archive.org,
but the naming convention and URL is not consistent through the collection
for Sysinternals, so it can take a fair amount of "research" to guess
where a really old copy is hiding.

Naturally, a lot of the Microsoft activity is obfuscated. BITS or DoSVC
do downloads of stuff, and there is more than just Patch Tuesday going
through there. The items may have long numbers for names, so you
cannot see "hey, this is KB1234567 coming in". Or "hey, my Metro.Apps
are getting updated, that Teams I never use is updated again" :-)
Just because you have a "trace", does not mean as the administrator
of the machine, you get to find out what the traffic sink is.

Wouldn't it be nice if... never mind :-)

Paul
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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

On 2026/9/5 19:3:3, Paul wrote:

On Sat, 9/5/2026 11:15 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:

[]

What I'd like is something I could invoke - say from a pinned taskbar
thing - when there's a flurry, which would list what's using the link,
at a fairly high level, such as Thunderbird, Edge, AVG, etc., not down
to the sub-sub-sub-process level. Ideally, dynamic.

Suggestions? I do have the Nirsoft and Sysinternals suites (and the
NirLauncher), and have tried a few likely-looking ones there, but they
were either not quite what I wanted, or gave too much information. But
one of those may be suitable and I just haven't picked the right one.

The thing is, the activity is fairly complex, for the human eye to eyeball,

[]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/tcpview

I think I had a look at that one.[]

Wireshark can give a detailed trace. The Wireshark PCAP, feeding a program

[]

winPCAP ---- <home brew prog> ---- <eyeballs> # You could use the captured packet stream
# to build your own summary. Remember, AI's write
# code, but you need a whip and chair to get a result.

Yes, I've experienced that; it took a while, but I was eventually
pleased with the result (a wrapper for yt-dlp that suited what I
wanted). It (that was ChatGPT) was very good at indenting and
commenting, I thought - just the right level of comments, not too many,
not too few.[]

Naturally, a lot of the Microsoft activity is obfuscated. BITS or DoSVC

At a pinch, I'd be content to exclude all Microsoft activity! Or,
perhaps preferably, have a single line called something like "Windows".
[]

Wouldn't it be nice if... never mind :-)

Paul

"What's suddenly using my internet". Maybe thresholded at, say, 10%, or
even more! It's just that I sometimes see a block in the graph (with accompanying steady beeping). Especially when it's _sending_ (green
rather than red graph in BitMeter2).

(https://codebox.net/pages/bitmeter2)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Lead me not into temptation - I can find my own way" - Mae West
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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

I have a network utility monitor that shows me when there is up- or
download traffic on my internet (wifi link). The one I use is BitMeter2,
but I imagine there are many such. It has an audio option - a beep every
x bytes up- or downloaded; I have this on (with x set to 100 kB). [Don't
use this unless you live alone - it irritates some people!]

I find it useful - to monitor things I've instigated such as downloads
(I get some idea of when they start and stop, and how fast the link is),
and also it tells me when something is unexpectedly down- or uploading.

When this latter happens, I'd like to know what is doing so. I normally expect Thunderbird, Edge, occasionally AVG, and Windows itself. I've
tried opening task manager and clicking on the Networking column to sort
by that, but that doesn't really tell me. (Also, if I was paranoid ... sometimes I think the burst of activity stops when I open task manager!
But I don't think that's really the case.)

What I'd like is something I could invoke - say from a pinned taskbar
thing - when there's a flurry, which would list what's using the link,
at a fairly high level, such as Thunderbird, Edge, AVG, etc., not down
to the sub-sub-sub-process level. Ideally, dynamic.

Suggestions? I do have the Nirsoft and Sysinternals suites (and the NirLauncher), and have tried a few likely-looking ones there, but they
were either not quite what I wanted, or gave too much information. But
one of those may be suitable and I just haven't picked the right one.

Since a long, long time, I use NetWorx [1]. It has an 'Applications'
tab in its 'Usage Report' which does exactly what you want, list
Received, Sent and Total for all network-using applications. For example
it now says that Google Drive, Google Chrome, Host Process for Windows
Services and Thunderbird are the biggest users on my system.

I am lucky that I have the latest free (as in no cost) version, 5.5.5.

Since then, NetWorx is payware, currently EUR 15 (free fully-featured
30-day trial).

The free versions are probably still on the net. Some sites seem to be
lying that newer/current versions are still free, but probably only free
to download, not free to use (indefinately).

You can do your own searching, but this - AFAIK reputable - site seems
to have version 5.5 (it's not clear if that's 5.5.5 or 5.5, my notes
imply that there is no 5.5):

<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/networx.html>

Hope this helps.

BTW, is this actually for Windows 7? AFAIK, you (also) have Windows
10. If so, I suggest you crosspost to the 10 and 11 groups. N.B. I've
been using NetWorx ever since Windows Vista, perhaps even on XP.

[1] <https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/>
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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

Earlier, I wrote:
[...]

You can do your own searching, but this - AFAIK reputable - site seems
to have version 5.5 (it's not clear if that's 5.5.5 or 5.5, my notes
imply that there is no 5.5):

<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/networx.html>

I downloaded this file (networx_setup_free.exe) and when hovering over
the file in File Explorer, it indeed says "File version: 5.5.5.0", so it
should be good. (Slightly smaller (4,744,560 bytes) than mine (4,778,072 bytes.)

[...]
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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

On 2026/9/6 11:30:52, Frank Slootweg wrote:

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

[]

What I'd like is something I could invoke - say from a pinned taskbar
thing - when there's a flurry, which would list what's using the link,
at a fairly high level, such as Thunderbird, Edge, AVG, etc., not down
to the sub-sub-sub-process level. Ideally, dynamic.

[]

Since a long, long time, I use NetWorx [1]. It has an 'Applications'
tab in its 'Usage Report' which does exactly what you want, list
Received, Sent and Total for all network-using applications. For example
it now says that Google Drive, Google Chrome, Host Process for Windows Services and Thunderbird are the biggest users on my system.

I am lucky that I have the latest free (as in no cost) version, 5.5.5.

[]

You can do your own searching, but this - AFAIK reputable - site seems
to have version 5.5 (it's not clear if that's 5.5.5 or 5.5, my notes
imply that there is no 5.5):

<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/networx.html>

Hope this helps.

It did, thanks (and though as you say it says it is 5.5, it is actually
5.5.5).

It looks to be exactly what I wanted - well, not completely dynamic, but refreshing every few seconds, which thinking about it is probably all
that can be done.>

BTW, is this actually for Windows 7? AFAIK, you (also) have Windows
10. If so, I suggest you crosspost to the 10 and 11 groups. N.B. I've
been using NetWorx ever since Windows Vista, perhaps even on XP.

[1] <https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/>

Ah, my bad. Thunderbird shows truncated forms in the left pane - I
currently see "a.w.general" and "a.c.o.windowrCa", and I chose the wrong
one; I've added the other. I do indeed own a W7 machine, but something
else I have to run needed 10 (and 64 bit), hence this machine.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I'm not an early bird or a night owl, I'm some sort of permanently
exhausted pigeon
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From Newsgroup: alt.windows7.general

On 6 Sep 2026 11:19:40 GMT
Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

Earlier, I wrote:
[...]

You can do your own searching, but this - AFAIK reputable - site seems
to have version 5.5 (it's not clear if that's 5.5.5 or 5.5, my notes
imply that there is no 5.5):

<https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/networx.html>

I downloaded this file (networx_setup_free.exe) and when hovering over
the file in File Explorer, it indeed says "File version: 5.5.5.0", so it should be good. (Slightly smaller (4,744,560 bytes) than mine (4,778,072 bytes.)

[...]

The? XP version I got, version 3.1, dated 2004 is 800k.

xposted to freeware and XP groups
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
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