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From The Sunday Times
February 15, 2009

Your tech queries answered

Nigel Powell solves your PC problems. This week: monitoring children's internet use

Q Both my son and daughter have laptops that connect wirelessly to our router at home. How can I measure the number of gigabytes of data they are each downloading? NH from Hampshire

A To do this, you need a bandwidth-monitoring program that will not only track the overall amount of data that has been downloaded over your network but will also tell you how much each of the individual computers that are connected to it is using.

For instance, BMExtreme (available for £17.50 at www.lp23.com/bmextreme ) is a commercial bandwidth-meter program that will help you to keep track of the usage of every machine in your home.

You will need to install this software onto each of these computers, however, and it is quite complicated to set up and use.

A simpler alternative is the BitMeter II program (free at tinyurl.com/be7uw ), which does a similar job. Again, you will have to install this onto each of your computers and then measure the amounts being downloaded separately to find out who is using what.

dontpanic@sunday-times.co.uk

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