Musoftware Network Monitor

Musoftware Network Monitor is a simple application that monitors your network traffic and shows a graph with the sent and received packets. It features just a couple of options that are intuitive enough to be figured out even by users with no previous experience in networking utilities.

.NET Framework must be installed on the computer to be able to launch this app, since it was developed with the aid of Microsoft's platform. It's wrapped in two files, the EXE and a DLL, which can be dropped in any part of the disk to run the tool.

It's also possible to copy Musoftware Network Monitor to a USB flash drive to run it on any PC. It doesn't add new entries to the Windows registry or create files on the HDD without permission.

Concerning the interface, the utility shows a small graph and automatically starts recording Internet traffic for the default network adapters. All network cards are immediately detected at startup, and you can pick the preferred one by clicking on its name or on two arrow keys to cycle through all options.

Right beneath the graph you can view the currently downloading and uploading packets, as this information is refreshed in real time. There are no other notable options available. Unfortunately, the application doesn't have features for recording network traffic statistics to file.

It worked smoothly in our tests, without hanging, crashing or prompting error messages. Unsurprisingly, CPU and RAM consumption was minimal.

Although it doesn't have richer settings, Musoftware Network Monitor offers a simple solution for monitoring and network traffic to find out the amount of downloaded and uploaded packets in real time. It's easy to use and free.