NemoBar

Monitoring your real-time network traffic is useful for figuring out possible Internet problems related to download and upload speed, as well as for identifying the most demanding applications with Internet access.

NemoBar is a simple program that places a toolbar right above the Windows toolbar, showing information about your Internet traffic in real time. There are installer and portable editions separately available for download, with the key difference being that you can place the second one in your collection of portable software and fire it whenever you have to track your download and upload speed.

The toolbar is green but can be changed into other colors (more on that later). It starts the monitor automatically at startup, showing the current and maximum recorded download and upload speed, along with total size of sent and received packets (regardless of the source). There are also two graphs that track the evolution of the download and upload rate, displaying readings in real time (spikes can be easily spotted).

To be able to customize the app, you can head over to the options panel after right-clicking the toolbar to open a menu. In addition to modifying the background, graph background, label, download, upload and text colors into anything you want, you can change the toolbar position from bottom to top side, as well as pick another network adapter to monitor (if you have multiple devices).

Another thing worth mentioning is that, once launched, the software application will automatically run every time you turn on your computer, no matter if you used the installer or portable version. This can be deactivated from the options panel, though.

NemoBar hasn't received updates for very long time, initially designed for Windows XP. However, it works surprisingly well on the latest Windows edition (in our case, at least), showing accurate download/upload readings while using minimal system resources.