Accurately determine data usage on a metered Internet connection

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Software to report internet traffic for home user

On my profile page of my ISP, I tracked that I used 100+ MB of data within 60 minutes of usage. During standalone downloading, my internet usually downloads @ 1 MB in over 1 minute. How do we know if our ISP is cheating on us, by faking our data usage?

Edit: Can we monitor our internet usage natively from Windows 7?

Solution

Have a look at: http://techpp.com/2010/07/04/9-cool-tools-monitor-internet-bandwidth-usage/

My favourite tool is NetMeter: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/NetMeter.shtml

Most ISPs are accurate so don't get too paranoid.

Comments

[Thalys]

some information on your setup might help - the router I use has a built in set of graphs showing traffic usage per day and current usage - if you have a router that supports dd-wrt, it would make monitoring bandwidth usage a lot easier.

[Shumon Saha]

@JourneymanGeek, I use a USB internet dongle.

[Scott Chamberlain]

Not enough to post as a answer, but to address your edit, there is nothing native in windows you could use without really hacking together some Performance Counters, Go with a free 3rd party software option that does the ugly tracking for you (never used it but that NetMeter that brett linked seems to be one).

[100rabh]

See Need to track total data transfer using Windows 7, Windows 7: measure mobile broadband connection traffic only - built-in tool? and Software to report internet traffic for home user