At home I now have a relatively slow dialup connection to the internet. I use a few different applications at the same time - one or two browser windows, AIM, MSN Messenger, perhaps an email application. I am running Windows 2000. Is there any way I can measure in real time which applications are using what percentage of my dialup bandwidth, so if I see that one is “hogging the line” I can decide to close it?
I have a little program called DU Meter that I found on http://www.winfiles.com that tells me my total up and down transfer rates. It won’t tell me which program is using the bandwidth, but I almost always know what it is, because most programs don’t transfer large amounts of information until you ask them to.
AIM, MSN Messenger and their ilk take virtually no bandwidth. DU Meter sits at zero unless some other program is doing something on the net. That is, unless you’re using them to transfer files, of course.
Depending on how you have your email program configured, it should behave similarly.
If you have your email program set to just check for mail then the hit on your bandwidth should be minimal. To check your mailbox it’ll send a couple of packets at a time. If your mailbox happens to have several messages then you’ll get a couple of packets back for each waiting message. But that’s all finished in a couple of seconds.
OTOH, if you have it set to automagically download your email then that could fill up your pipe without any intervening action on your part. That’s one reason I don’t have my mail program configured to do that. I want to tell it when to grab my mail.
About the only time I fill up the pipe is when I’m jumping between multiple browser windows which are looking at sites with heavy graphics. On a modem connection, I found that three to five was usually a practical limit.