Internet use moniter

[anne]

Vista premium x64. A friend has a 2g mobile broadband connection for his home pc with a soap on a rope modem. He can't get standard cable or dsl where he is.
He has a monthly 2 gig limit for $29. Trouble his his bills are always $65 or more up to $150 and he is not useing it all that much now but it is still up high.
The monitering gauge that is provided by the isp must be giving a false reading.
Is there a way in vista or is there a free software tool that will tell exactly what is being used and when?
Thanks

[SpywareDr]

NetLimiter 2 Monitor?
http://www.netlimiter.com/index.php
http://www.netlimiter.com/featurelist.php
http://www.netlimiter.com/buy.php
http://www.netlimiter.com/download.php

Once installed, (which includes a reboot), load Netlimiter and click View | All tools | Stats.

[Steve R Jones]

I wonder if his neighbors are borrowing his service?

[Tuttle]

Nah, if that were the case his bills would be 4 or 5 digits. Australian mobile Internet excess fees are... obscene.

I know people who have used DU Meter. Only a 30-day trial unfortunately, but that should be enough to prove a point.

Make sure he's not doing any sort of P2P on that connection -- even after you close a P2P app, you'll still get hit with a bunch of traffic for a while afterwards as clients keep trying to connect. Given where an ISP's metering system resides, you get charged for all traffic sent to your connection whether you want it or not, and whether your firewall lets it through or not.

Also, remember that all the mobile ISPs down here charge for uploads as well as downloads -- sending email eats into the quota too.

[SuperSparks]

Some routers have built in usage monitoring, if he ever wants to get one (even with a single computer a router can be worth having for the benefits of NAT and a firewall).