As more and more TV companies launch their own download players/services – BBCi Player, ITV Player, 4 oD etc. more and more people are downloading their favourite programmes to watch.
However, a lot of people don’t realise that all these services use peer-to-peer networking for their operation and in doing so, allow the download programs to use multiple PC’s to assist in the distribution of the various TV programmes.
So what is the problem? If you’re on a low cost Internet Service Provider (ISP) contract and have a maximum amount of download allocation per month, you could find that this is now being eaten up by the peer-to-peer networking operations even when you’re not downloading or watching programmes that you’ve downloaded! In some cases ISP’s are now starting to charge additional fees for users that go over their download limits.
Two software programs that I recently came across should help anyone monitor more accurately what is being downloaded (and uploaded) to their PC and with one of the programs, shut off the peer-to-peer downloading operation when you don’t need it.
NetLimiter 2 Monitor is as its name implies is a network monitor, that allows you to accurately monitor and build up a set of statistics for all network activity associated with your PC, including local network traffic. If you are using any of the popular TV players, run this program for a few days to see what the network activity on your PC.
TV On-Demand Monitor when loaded, checks what ‘background’ peer-to-peer programs are running on your PC and allows you to switch them on and off as and when required.
Hope this helps a few people.
Beasley's Place 