Rubbernet – Network Bandwidth Monitor for Mac

Rubbernet – Conceited Software – $29.99

It wasn’t that long ago that we used to fire up a dial-up modem when we wanted to connect to the Internet and check something out. After we’d tied up the only phone line into the house and pissed off other members of the family who wanted to make a phone call but got line noise screeched down their ears, we’d get offline and continue using our computers with no wider connectivity. Times have changed of course and us first-worlders now treat the Internet like any service that’s connected to our house. But none of this means that bandwidth is suddenly some infinite resource, any more than electricity or water is. And when you want to find out what’s consuming all your bandwidth, it’s actually a fairly tricky process.

Rubbernet’s job is to monitor all the network traffic in and out of your Mac. On the dashboard you get a summary of what’s running at that moment, a list of apps and their statuses, upstream and downstream charts and access to further computers you might be monitoring. This being a Lion-friendly app, you can view fullscreen (great for network monitoring stations) or resize the in-app windows as you see fit.

The main window displays the apps, their status (active, inactive or idle), which user ‘owns’ that app, download and upload rates, total data downloaded and uploaded and the last activity of that app. To keep tabs on your system, you can start Rubbernet when you start your Mac and just let it quietly record how much data each of your applications is consuming. It was something of an eye-opener for me to discover that I was getting through a couple of gigabytes of data in Firefox alone.

Rubbernet also enables you to isolate certain activities, such as Back To My Mac, Skype and the System. This is a great way of tracking down errant applications or processes that are eating up your precious bandwidth. I’d always wondered how much data Skype used and it turns out that it’s a pretty frugal sort of an application, while my web browser’s a data glutton.

If you want you can also monitor other Macs on your local network. To get everything set up you simply install a small system application on the target computer and you can connect to it when you first start Rubbernet. In this way it’s possible for a system admin to track data usage on individual Macs on the network – the connections tab is particularly useful in this regard because it enables you to view hosts, ports, apps and bandwidth usage.

If you need to do some network detective work because something’s consuming far too much bandwidth, then Rubbernet’s perfect for the job. It enables you to monitor everything that’s going out from and into your Mac or other Macs on your local network. It has a clean and easily read interface, a minimalist but carefully designed feature-list and a reasonable pricetag. Recommended.