NetTraffic: display network traffic information on the Windows desktop

If you want to find out how fast you are downloading or uploading in Windows, you will notice that it is not really that easy to find out. While some third party programs display those information to you in their interface, Windows itself seemingly does not make available any of those information to you directly.

Windows offers tools that display your network's activity but you need to know where to look. You can open the Task Manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc for instance and switch to the Networking tab there, or use the Resource Monitor instead which is also highlighting all the processes that use bandwidth currently.
NetTraffic is a free alternative for Windows that you can use to display the bandwidth utilization of a network adapter.

Note: NetTraffic requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

It adds a single icon to the Windows system tray that is highlighting if upload or download bandwidth are used currently. When you hover over the icon, the current upload and download speed is listed in a small notification window.

A click opens the traffic graph that stays there until you click it away again. The always on top graph highlights the upload and download bandwidth in absolute numbers and as a graph. You can disable the always on top nature of the window though if you want with a right-click and the selection of Always on top in the context menu. Here you can also open the program's preferences.

The application uses all network interfaces by default. If you only want to monitor one or some, you can modify that here in the preferences. Here you can also modify the update interval which is set to 1000ms by default and change the colors that are used to paint the chart information on the screen.
The statistics window displays several interesting information. It not only displays the yearly, monthly, daily and hourly bandwidth utilization of the selected network adapters, but also a prognosis and average values.
You need to run the network traffic monitor for a while on the system as the accuracy will increase significantly over time.
The statistics window offers charts as well that you can make use of to display the traffic utilization for a given time frame in the window. Information can be displayed as graphs or in a table, with options to export data into an xml file.

Verdict

If you want to monitor your system's bandwidth over time, then this is one of the tools that you can use for the purpose. If you need information about the bandwidth of individual processes, try NetLimiter Monitor.

Find out if your computer acts as a Skype Super-Node

Bandwidth usage can be extremely different for Skype users which can be attributed whether computers are being used as Skype Super-Nodes. A Super-Node is basically a computer that is running Skype and not preventing the software access to the ports 80 and 443 which are used to route traffic from other Skype users who are behind a protected system.

The major problem with being a Skype Super-Node is that the bandwidth usage per hour will be much higher which might cause concern for users with Internet accounts that are having bandwidth limitations.
A great way for finding out if your system is being used as a Skype Super-Node is by installing a software that logs the bandwidth usage of Skype when the application is running. One tool that can do that is the trial version of Netlimiter which can be used for 30 days before it has to be registered.
Netlimiter logs all incoming and outgoing connections and their traffic consumption and it is possible to display the traffic consumption of a specific application as well.

The best way in my opinion to find out if Skype is acting as a Super-Node is to start it and let it run for a few hours without using it actively. Bandwidth consumption is obviously higher if you make calls or transfer data with Skype and it is more difficulty to find out if Skype is acting as a Super-Node if you have to analyze the traffic in direct and indirect traffic.
The above screenshot is showing the incoming and outgoing Skype bandwidth for most of today and as you can see it's less than 500 Kilobyte. Super-Nodes can use hundreds of Megabytes.
The easiest way to prevent Skype from being a Super-Node is to block access to the ports 80 and 443 in Skype. You can do that under Tools > Options > Connections. Just uncheck the option "Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections".