StreamWatcher displays a widow which shows all network connections between your Mac and other computers, be they on your local network, or on the Internet. For each connection, or stream, it displays the protocol being used (TCP or UDP) the source machine and port, the destination machine and port, the current upload and download speed in bytes per second, and the lifetime upload and download speed in bytes per second. Clicking on a heading in the window will sort on that item, so you can easily identify bandwidth hogs and who they are talking to.
StreamWatcher Shows Network Connections and Bandwidth Use
The preferences allow you to modify the behavior of StreamWatcher, so you can change the list update interval (default of 1 second) and the amount of time to remove an inactive stream (default of 10 seconds). You can also ask to resolve hostnames (default of on) as well as resolve service names (default of off). The preferences also let you customize the format of the data to be written to a log file. There’s a summary feature that will show total streams, total current upload and download bandwidth, and total lifetime upload and download bandwidth. You can filter the output based on a search string. Finally, you can pause, resume and refresh the monitoring of the streams.
So learn who your Mac is talking to, and how much bandwidth it’s using, and check out StreamWatcher today! Have any other gadgets that let you see what’s happening on your network? Send an email to John and he’ll get down with it.