LAN activity (blinking light) ... how to?

TheSchaft said:

bjrichus -
(BTW, you can get rid of a double post by clicking "edit" on the one you want to dump and then "delete" in the edit box. Don't fill in a reason, and then hit delete and it should automagically disappear. Worked for me.)

Got it!

Thanks for pointing it out... I must have been asleep or something!!! LOL!!!

Barman58 said:

One totally "off the wall" option - Comodo's free Firewall has an animated Tray icon that shows Upload & Download activity. Over the top for an activity indicator but if you want a good firewall and indication in x64

I downloaded and installed it on my system. Works well.

As you say, over the top, but until something better comes along, it'll do.

Thanks for the pointer Barman.

I've been trying out an application that makes your keyboard lights flash with the network activity! it won't be everyone's cup of tea depending on how bright your keyboards lights are.
it works pretty well IMO, it does exactly what my router light does for my pc.

IT Samples - Network Lights

It's a bit of a novel idea but it might be worth a try.

Generator said:

I've been trying out an application that makes your keyboard lights flash with the network activity!

Ah yes.

Got it - very cute too (works fine on 64bit too).

After trying Lan Lights on Windows7 32 bit I noticed it takes a constant 3-5% CPU usage. Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm using a free-ware utility called NetWorx. It's compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Win.7 and does the job for me. It creates a tiny animated graph icon and can creat an enlarged version for placement in an out-of-the-way corner of your desktop. It is also highly configurable.

weh said:

I'm using a free-ware utility called NetWorx. It's compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Win.7 and does the job for me. It creates a tiny animated graph icon and can creat an enlarged version for placement in an out-of-the-way corner of your desktop. It is also highly configurable.

Nice looking little utility.

Thanks for the pointer.

Networx is nice but not really a replacement for the network activity lights. It shows either a static bar icon, or an animated graph which I find difficult to see because it's so small.

It samples - Network lights work well but it doesn't respond to all traffic. If you ping a server for instance the LED's wont light up. Perhaps because the packets are too small. But this then defeats the whole point.

LanLights use 3-5% constant CPU usage and also found it kept sending data?
This didn't happen on my XP box, but I don't need it for XP.
Hopefully these bugs will be ironed out by the developer.

Is there nothing else similar to LanLights?

I'm not a programmer but I imagine writing an app just to monitor traffic is relatively easy. I think the majority of people don't need fancy HW monitoring. But just a simple tool that can replace the XP lights.

I changed the colors and settings on NetWorx so that incoming is green, bidirectional is yellow and outgoing is red. I also set the scale to corespond to my broadband upload speed. That way, the small icon changes color quickly in response to any activity. I don't care that it saturates on incoming data -- it still tracts the actual numbers. Even with the limited scaling, I can tell easily when something is wrong. Plus, I can switch to automatic scaling anytime I like.