Netspeed

While some of us enjoy high-speed connections and seamless browsing, others may struggle with slow or unreliable internet access. Moreover, some need to keep a close eye on their data cap to avoid stingy extra monthly fees.

Luckily, there are a plethora of applications out there to help you monitor your Internet usage and ensure that you manage the most of it. Netspeed is a tiny tool that displays the daily data usage along with the current download and upload speeds.

The setup is straightforward, but you want to create a desktop shortcut for easy access, especially since the tool doesn’t start with Windows. Alternatively, you may open it one time per day and access it whenever necessary from the System Tray.

The interface is minimalistic and consists of a narrow window-line that displays the download and upload speeds in real-time. The third value that you see increasing constantly is the total daily usage. You may like the GUI if you have a rather ‘busy’ desktop, as it is rather small and can be easily moved to any area of the screen whether it doesn’t distract you.

A drawback of the tool is that it doesn’t provide any way to check out the weekly or monthly data consumption. If you want to use the tool to make sure you are within the data plan cap, you may have to remember to note the usage down. Frankly, it can be a nuisance, unless you are setting daily usage targets.

Nevertheless, Netspeed does a decent job with providing real-time data on the download and upload speeds. From this alone, you can notice potential problems and proceed to troubleshooting, track daily patterns or identify various data-intensitve activities.