BitMeter OS

The Monitor page shows real-time connection usage, updating its display once each second by default.

To adjust the vertical scale, use the Up and Down arrows on the right of the page.

Upload and download rates can be shown simultaneously, or in isolation - use the Show Upload and Show Download checkboxes to change what is displayed.

Selecting the Show Speeds in Title option displays the current upload and download speeds in the title of the browser window, allowing connection speeds to be monitored while the browser is minimised, or obscured by other applications.

The Stopwatch utility, displayed by clicking the circular icon in the lower right part of the screen, can be used to check total, peak and average speeds over any time interval that you choose.

	Download	Upload
Total	0	0
Average	0	0
Max	0	0
Min	0	0

The History page illustrates how your connection usage has changed over time, using 3 different graphs. The vertical scale of each graph represents the amount of data transferred, and the horizontal scale represents time, with new data appearing at the left of the graph and older data towards the right.

The differently coloured parts of each bar show the upload and download amounts for that interval.

The horizontal scales show approximate dates and times, for more exact data hover your mouse over a bar and a small box will appear, containing the required information.

The vertical scales of each graph can be varied independently using the Up and Down arrows on the right.

In the uppermost graph, entitled Minutes, each vertical bar represents 1 minute of time.

In the center graph, entitled Hours, each vertical bar represents 1 hour.

In the lower graph, entitled Days, each vertical bar represents 1 day.

This page also provides an Export link, below the graphs, which allows you to download a CSV file containing all the data held in the Bitmeter OS database. The CSV file can be viewed in any spreadsheet application or text-editor and contains 1 line for each entry in the database. Each line in the file represents a period of time during which your network connection was active, and contains the following 7 values:

• Date - The date on which the row's values were recorded
• Start Time - The start of the time interval covered by the row
• End Time - The end of the time interval covered by the row
• Download - The number of bytes downloaded during this time interval
• Upload - The number of bytes uploaded during this time interval
• Host - If the row represents data retrieved from BitMeter OS running on another computer (using the synchronisation feature), then the name of the computer will appear here, otherwise this value will be empty.
• Adapter - The name of the network adapter used to upload/download the data

The Summary page displays a basic summary of your connection usage, showing how much data has been uploaded and downloaded today, this month, this year, and in total.

The date and time when BitMeter began recording your connection usage is shown next to the Since label.

If the database includes data imported from other hosts via the bmsync utility, then a list of these hosts will be shown at the bottom of the summary.

The Query page allows you to view how your connection has been used during a date range that you specify.

Enter the first and last dates of the range into the From Date and To Date boxes, using the calendars which are displayed by clicking the calendar icons.

Specify how you would like the results of your query grouped, by selecting one of the options from the Display list.

Clicking the Go button will display the results of your query in the grid on the right of the page. If a large number of results are returned then they may be split into pages, you can navigate through the pages of results by using the blue left and right arrows underneath the grid. You can sort the results by date, or by upload or download amounts, by clicking the column headings in the grid. Clicking a column heading a second time will reverse the order of the sort.

When a set of results are displayed in the grid an Export Results link will appear on the left of the page, clicking this link exports the values currently shown in the grid in CSV format, the resulting file can be viewed in any spreadsheet application or text-editor.

The Alerts page allows you to create, update, delete and monitor BitMeter Alerts. An Alert notifies you when your connection usage reaches some pre-defined limit, and may be useful if your Internet Service Provider imposes restrictions on how much data you can upload/download within a certain period of time.

Any Alerts that have been defined are listed on the page, with a progress bar shown against each one to indicate how close you are to the limit. If the limit for a particular Alert has been exceeded then the bar is shown in red. Hovering the mouse over the info icon (or over the exclamation point icon, if the limit has been exceeded) shows more detailed progress information. The Edit and Delete links allow you to modify or remove an Alert, respectively.

To create a new Alert, click the Create link, which will launch the Alert Editor. The Alert Editor dialog is divided into 5 sections, each of which must be completed before a new Alert can be saved:

The Direction section prompts you to choose whether the Alert should count uploaded data, downloaded data, or both, towards its total.

The Amount section asks you indicate how much data can be transferred before the Alert's limit is reached. Enter an amount using the standard abbreviations kB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), GB (gigabytes), or TB (terabytes).

The Interval Start section lets you specify the date and time from which the Alert will count your connection usage, this can be expressed in one of three ways:

• From a fixed Date and Time - this is the simplest type of alert. All your connection usage from the date/time that you specify will count towards the Alert, consequently the total will continue to rise indefinitely and will never be reset.
• Using a repeating interval - this type of Alert is suitable for tracking your connection usage if your Internet Service Provider limits your usage over a calendar month, a week, or even a single day. Select the length of interval to be used, and then specify from when, during that interval, the Alert should start. For example, if your usage is limited to a certain amount each month then select Monthly Intervals, and then use the Day of Month and Time of Day lists to specify from when during the month the Alert should start counting towards its total.
• Using a rolling interval - this type of Alert is suitable for tracking your connection usage if your Internet Service Provider limits your usage over a rolling/sliding interval, specified as a certain number of hours or days from the current date and time (for example, 'the last 30 days', or 'the last 24 hours').

The Times section allows you to specify the times of day, and the days of the week, when your connection usage should count towards the alert. If all usage should be counted then select the All usage option, otherwise select the Only at certain times option, and then use the date/time selectors to add one or more intervals to the list. To add a new interval you must select at least 1 day of the week, as well as indicating the start and end times of the interval on that day using the slider. Multiple intervals can be added, and overlaps between intervals are allowed.

The Name section is where you enter a descriptive name for the alert that you have created - this name will be displayed on the alerts list shown on the page after the new alert has been created.

The Preferences page displays various configuration values that can be changed to alter the appearance or behavior of BitMeter OS.

Once a value has been altered it must be saved before the change will take effect.

Buttons labelled Save in Browser will store the selected configuration values in a browser cookie - such changes will only be visible in the browser that was used while making the change, and will be lost if cookies are cleared.

Buttons labelled Save to Server will send the selected configuration values back to the BitMeter server to be stored - values changed in this way will be visible to all users of the server. Only users with administrative access can save values to the server, users without this level of access will see the Save to Server buttons as disabled.