Best Free Download/Upload Meter
NetMeter [1] shows upload and download speeds, along with cumulative weekly and monthly volumes and projected values. The program reminds me in many ways of Hagel’s excellent $20 shareware product “DU Meter.”
A good alternative, if you have the Microsoft .NET package V1.1 already installed, is BitMeter II from Codebox Software [2]. It’s a little more feature rich than NetMeter but uses a tad more of your PCs resources to deliver those features.
A third candidate is NET Traffic Meter [3]. Feature wise this is closer to BitMeter II than NetMeter and like BitMeter requires the .NET framework, though in this case V2.0 rather than 1.1. From the web site it appears development has ceased but the product is still available from numerous download sites including this one [4].
[1] http://readerror.gmxhome.de/ Freeware, all Windows versions, 601KB
[2] http://codebox.no-ip.net/controller?page=bitmeter2 Freeware, Win98 and later, 0.99MB
[3] http://www.trafficmeter.be/Freeware Win98 and later excluding Vista, 834KB
[4] http://www.snapfiles.com/get/nettrafficmeter.html