##

The Monitor window allows you to see the characters per second throughput of your Internet connection in real time. Green bars in the upper half show receive data while red bars in the lower half show transmit. The plot shifts left each second to show the last minute of data transfer.

The scale for the vertical axis defaults to base-2 logarithmic and adjusts automatically so the data will fit. Each succesive vertical increment represents twice as much data. The marks on the vertical axis are spaced two increments apart corresponding to four times as much data (0, 2, 8, 32, 128, 512, 2K, 8K, 32K...). By using a logarithmic scale, small packets are easily visible along side large data transfers.

A check box by the bottom left of the plot area selects a linear vertical scale for visually comparing the relative size of plot segments.

The numeric display below the plot area shows the total number bytes sent and received as well as the maximum and average number of bytes per second. The total number of bytes sent and received is updated any time the Monitor window is running and is remembered between monitoring sessions. You can reset the totals by selecting "Clear" under the History menu. The average number of bytes per second is calculated over the last 10 seconds.

The popup menu just above the Start button selects the network port for monitoring. Notice you can have more than one Monitor window monitoring different network ports at the same time.

IPNetMonitorX recognizes the 'GURL' AppleEvent to handle URLs of the form:

    	monitor://localhost;interface=en0

You can select File->Save to save a double-clickable ".ipnm" document with the corresponding URL. You can preview the URL that will be saved by pausing over the "Save" button in the panel that appears. URLs are saved as plain text. You can include multiple URLs in the same file, one per line, to open the corresponding tools.

The number of characters per second are counted at "network interrupt time" (splnet), so are largely unaffected by other applications on your system. The Monitor actually collects data by inserting a probe module (IPNetKernel NKE) between the network layer (IP) and the Data Link provider. The probe can be inserted as a DLIL Interface Filter (default) to see all traffic on that interface (including ARP and AppleTalk), or as a DLIL Protocol Filter to see only IP traffic. DLIL Protocol Filters do not see traffic from the Classic network stack. To insert the probe as a Protocol Filter, press and hold the Option key while clicking on the Start button to begin monitoring.

The probe module (IPNetKernel NKE) only intercepts network traffic while monitoring is in progress. When the Monitor tool(s) for a given interface stop monitoring, the probe module is automatically removed from the corresponding data stream. The NKE normally remains loaded until you restart your system since other applications might be using it. You can try forcing the NKE to unload by selecting "Unload NKE" from the IPNetMonitorX application menu. This feature allows you to load a newer version of the NKE without restarting your system. The NKE will only unload when all monitoring connections to it have been stopped.

Previous | Next | Return to IPNetMonitorX Help