TMeter

TMeter is a resourceful utility that includes numerous options to help you keep track of network traffic. Geared toward experts, the application lets you examine graphs and generate reports.

The installation procedure doesn't take a long time to finish. You can set up everything, exclude the VMWare-compatible packet capture driver, or only set up the tool required for remotely managing the TMeter service.

The administrative console is made from a large window with a neatly structured layout, where TMeter gathers and shows information about network adapters for traffic capturing.

You can select a network interface and set the alias type between public and private, as well as check out properties regarding the adapter's medium, description, internal name, IP address, mask, permanent and current MAC address, and promiscuous mode. The service operation mode can be chosen between strict, active and passive.

TMeter shows a meter with network traffic and lets you investigate a wide range of statistics, such as traffic counters, logs, denied packets, the process list, current DHCP leases, along with monitoring states and events.

What's more, you can modify traffic counters (measurement unit, sent and received bytes), reset counters in the process list, or submit IP addresses with host names, descriptions, MAC addresses, vendors and states for monitoring.

TMeter lets you enable a firewall on public network interfaces and indicate any exceptions, enable network address translation (NAT) and either specify the public IP address or ask the tool to autodetect it, or activate a DNS server, set the primary and alternative DNS server, as well as create a list with extra allowed hosts.

In the following steps, you can enable a DHCP server, set the IP address range, manage static DHCP records, and set the default gateway, network mask and DNS servers, and also specify an IP address and TCP port number for forwarding packets.

Filters and rules can be edited when it comes to speed and traffic limits, packet and host header logging, packets rewriting, excluding URL filtering and traffic reports, and other aspects. Likewise, you can administer URL filters, IP address groups, users, process definitions and host monitoring, connect to databases (MS SQL Server, MS Access, MySQL, custom), or generate database traffic reports.

The filterset can be saved to file, while the traffic counters can be reset. You can customize the graph colors, change the measurement unit for the traffic counter, modify the default folders for storing filtersets, their backups and log files, password-protect TMeter to prevent other users from accessing it, set a fixed font for traffic counters, or show them in reverse.

No error dialogs were shown in our tests, and the tool didn't hang or crash. It uses a decent amount of CPU and RAM, so it didn't hamper system performance. TMeter comes loaded with a rich set of options and configuration settings for monitoring network traffic, and it should meet the requirements of advanced users.