Saturday, August 30, 2008

Comcast Bandwidth capping & Macs



So, you've heard about Comcast enforcing a bandwidth cap of 250GB/month starting on October 1st & maybe even saw it on Comcast's site as well. But, how are you going to be able to monitor your use if you have a Mac, you ask.

The first tool I'd suggest is Comcast's own speedtest site

Next, there are 2 pretty good apps that I'm using now, iStat Menu & SurplusMeter. iStatMenu is donationware & SurplusMeter is freeware.

From the developer's site, SurplusMeter "measures the download and upload traffic on your Internet connection and keeps a record of your traffic volume. It gives you all kinds of useful output statistics, like daily allowance, average daily usage, accumulated surplus, and more."

iStatMenu "monitors current and total bandwidth, peak bandwidth and IP addresses. PPP Controls for 10.5 users." You have easy access to all this information allows right in your menubar. I think they compliment each other pretty damn well & come October 1st, are going to be essential for Mac users who have Comcast.