Hi,
My internet service provider is a certain cable company who likes to oversell their network and gets torqued at people who actually use the bandwidth they are paying for. When that happens, their network policy is to throttle back the user's network speed 'during times of heavy network congestion'. While I understand why this is done and don't necessarily disagree with this type of network management (although I vehemently disagree with them selling more than they can provide), I want to make sure they aren't abusing that policy because I pay close to 100 USD per month for my high speed internet and I've noticed my download and upload speeds drop to less than half the providers advertised speeds at three in the morning; hardly a time when tons of people are using the network. I need to keep track of these occurrences: I would like to keep a running log of my connection speeds. I have a monitor on my system that keeps a running total of my bandwidth usage, i.e., the amount of data I've downloaded but it doesn't log anything except that.
What I'd like is an application that meets the following criteria:
1) monitors internet connection speed from my computer (i.e., a non centralized software solution).
2a) customizable so that the files used to test the speeds can be host on any server (I have my own offsite internet facing servers and know my providers speeds so I'd like to test from that centralized point to avoid information inaccuracies from problems that may occur from static test servers out of my control)
OR
2b) can monitor the in and out speeds without having to upload and download files (is this even possible?).
3) can assign monitoring to specific adapters within the host.
4) works on Windows Vista & XP preferably as a service (but I'll take a tray application as well).
5) creates logs of retained data with logging to an SQL database preferable ( but I can use other databases or do an import to SQL periodically so this isn't grotesquely important as long as the log files are formatted in such a way that I can import them without an excessive amount of work).
6) can track both upload and download speeds (I need this because my connection is a-synchronous and my download bandwidth is proportional to upload bandwidth).
7) reasonably priced (while reasonable is a matter of opinion; anything over 100 USD will be looked at but the chances of implementation are small).
I'm offering 500 points to the individual who recommends the solution I finally implement so feel free to throw your ideas out there.
As always, many, many thanks to all experts who offer their time, opinions and solutions to make our electronic lives better.
P
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