Which application is eating up traffic? Where does the traffic go? How to find a “leak” using the simplest means

With the widespread use of the Internet, the number of viruses has increased, which seek not only to harm the user’s computer, but to transfer his information to third-party servers. At the same time, other malicious applications, which can work in background and interfere with the stable functioning of the computer, for example, Bitcoin currency miners. If you suspect that some applications are using the Internet to transfer data, hidden from the user, you can verify this by checking which programs are using the connection at a particular point in time. This can be done using Windows, but it’s more clear to use specialized third-party applications.

How to find out using Windows which programs use the Internet

The Windows operating system has a lot of built-in diagnostic utilities without an interface, which operate via the command line. Among them is the netstat utility, which monitors the statistics of connections between the computer and third-party servers. To use it, you need to run and enter the command in it netstat, after which the screen will display a list of active, waiting and other connections, as well as basic information about them - ports and addresses.

The functionality of the utility does not end there, and it allows you to learn more about each of the connections. To command line information about programs using the Internet is displayed, enter netstat –b. An exe file that works with this connection will be shown next to the IP addresses and ports.

At the same time, the functionality of the netstat utility is much higher. It allows you to display information about listening ports, the contents of the route table, the offload status of a particular connection, and much more. For a regular user this information not really required, but may be needed system administrator. To see full list commands from the netstat utility, must be entered on the command line netstat –h.

How to find out which programs are using the Internet using TCPView

There are many various applications, which allow you to determine which programs use the Internet. Among them is the TCPView utility, which does not require installation on a computer, making it convenient to use for diagnostic purposes. The TCPView application can be downloaded from the official developer website or other trusted sources on the Internet. The application is launched from the TCPView.exe shortcut.

By launching the application, the user will see a complete list of the computer’s active connections to third-party servers.

By default, TCPView displays connection information in 12 columns:

  • Process, - the name of the process itself ( executable file), which uses the connection;
  • PID, - the number under which the active process is identified by the system;
  • Protocol, - protocol used by the program for connection;
  • Local address, - local address computer involved in the process;
  • Local port, - local port computer involved in the process;
  • Remote address, - address remote computer(server) to which the process is connected;
  • Remote port, - port of the remote computer (server) to which the process is connected;
  • State, - Current state connections – connected, waiting, closed, etc.;
  • Sent Packets, - transmitted number of packets;
  • Sent Bytes, - the amount of transmitted information in bytes;
  • RCVD Packets, - number of received packets;
  • Rcvd Bytes, - the amount of information received in bytes.

If the user does not know the name of the process connected to a third-party server, and he doubts its “purity,” find out detailed information you can talk about it if you click right click mouse over the process and select “Process properties”. A window will open where the address of the executable file is indicated in the “Path” column.

If you need to stop execution this process, you can click on the “End Process” button.

When you need to disconnect a process from the network, right-click on it in the list and select “Close Connection”.

If you need to determine the specific IP address to which the computer is connected, you can press Ctrl+R, and the address names will be converted to IP.

Many modern programs start working with the network immediately after turning on the computer, checking and downloading updates or other data in the background. In this case, the user may not even know that the computer is in currently actively consumes Internet traffic. If you have unlimited tariff plan, it’s not scary, but what to do if your laptop or computer is connected, for example, to a wireless 3G Internet that has limited traffic, exceeding which can lead to unplanned financial expenses!? First of all, to control such programs you need to know which of them establish a “hidden” connection to the Internet and close them or block them in their settings automatic connection or update. In order to see which applications are using the Internet, you should use the built-in feature of the Windows 7 operating system, the Resource Monitor program. You can get to the program in several ways: through the Start button ("Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Resource Monitor") or press the key combination "Ctrl+Shift+Esc", in the task manager that launches, go to the "Performance" tab and click to the "Resource Monitor..." button.

In the Resource Monitor window, go to the Network tab. In the left area of ​​the window you will see several lists, and in the right - graphical dependences of the network connection speed on time. You need the first two lists and graphics.

The "Processes with network activity" list displays programs connected to the Internet, sorted in descending order of Internet connection speed, that is, the first programs use the Internet more than others. If you don't know what these programs are, use Windows search. Click on the "Start" button and enter the name of the program in the search field, then move the mouse over the found position and you will see detailed description programs.

If the search did not produce anything, you can search for the program on system disk and, having analyzed its path, find out what kind of program it is and where it is located. For example, as you can see from the figure below, the “instup.exe” program (the first one in the list of my resource monitor) is located in the folder of the “Avast” antivirus installed on my computer (with automatic updates enabled).

To find out how much more the programs you are interested in use the Internet than others, check the box next to them and on the first graph on the right you will see an orange curve against the background of the entire bandwidth in the form of a green graph indicating how much the selected program uses the Internet, and on the second - how much She opened TCP connections out of the total number. As you can see from the picture below, running browser "Mozilla Firefox" uses almost all the traffic on the computer.

In the second list on the left you can see which sites the selected program accesses (if the host has a domain, it will be shown instead of the IP address), as well as average speed sending, receiving and transmitting data over the last minute to each server, expressed in bytes per second.

Thus, the "Resource Monitor" will let you understand what programs use the Internet, as well as what sites they interact with.

Advice: if for some reason you were unable to identify a program by its name, but you urgently need to stop it, click on it right key mouse in the resource monitor window and select the "Suspend process" option.

The program can be terminated completely by selecting the appropriate option, but only until the next restart of the computer.

Many users of the new Windows 10 operating system are faced with the problem of consuming Internet traffic from the new OS. This is often the case, especially if an expensive road with limited traffic is used. Mobile Internet, becomes specific problem. Let's try to figure out what is consuming traffic and how to solve it this problem. In this article, we will tell you how to limit your bandwidth consumption by disabling undocumented features that constantly use the Internet by default.

Monitoring programs that consume traffic

If you have noticed the traffic consumption of your computer, you need to open the “Data Usage” tab, which can be found in the “Settings” section and then “Network and Internet”.


In this tab you can find the total amount of data for the last month. And to clarify which programs consumed traffic, you need to open the “Usage Information” tab.

From the resulting list of traffic consumers, you can find out which programs you do not use, but at the same time they actively consume Internet traffic. These programs can be removed or blocked from accessing the network. Many applications automatically check for updates and download them, consuming traffic accordingly. Disable automatic update This is usually possible in the settings of the program itself.

If in the list you see an object unknown to you that consumes a significant amount of Internet traffic, try to find information about it and its harmfulness. You also need to scan your computer with an antivirus.

Disable automatic Windows 10 updates

To limit traffic consumption by the system, you must first communicate your desire to the OS itself. To do this, set the connection type – “Limited connection”. Windows 10 in this case will disable downloading updates for the system.

You can set a limited connection type as follows: In “Settings”, click on the “Network and Internet” icon and on the Wi-Fi tab, after the list available connections, select " Extra options" Remember that during such manipulations the connection must be active.


In the parameters window that opens wireless connection you need to select "Set as" metered connection" Please note that the selected option is only active if it is currently enabled. wireless connection. If in the future you connect another access point, then restrictions will not apply to it.

Disabling updates from multiple locations

At standard settings, the operating system receives updates not only from the Microsoft website, but also from local network and the Internet from other computers (more or less how a torrent works). This allows you to reduce the load on the Microsoft website and speed up downloading of updates. This leads to the fact that parts of the update will be downloaded from your computer by other users, which in turn will increase your traffic consumption. To prevent this from happening, you need to prevent other users from connecting to your computer and downloading the necessary updates from your PC.

To do this, you need to go to “Settings” and then to “Update and Security”. Here we select “Center” Windows updates" and click "Advanced options". A small list will open where you need to find “Choose how and when to receive updates.” By clicking on this tab, we prohibit updating from several places.

Disable automatic app updates

In the operating room Windows system 10 automatic update is performed by default installed applications installed from the Application Store. This eliminates the need for the user to independently carry out this work. However, in some cases such an update is undesirable. For example, if you are not sure whether a new version the program is stable and does not contain critical errors. It is also advisable to disable this function, if there is a goal to save traffic.

What is needed for this:

1. You need to open the App Store.


3. Disable “Automatically update applications when active connection via Wi-Fi."


In the same section, you can disable updating live tiles (news, weather, etc.). This will reduce traffic a little more.

Additional Information

Often the main consumers of traffic are torrent clients and Internet browsers. In this case, change Windows settings doesn't make sense. You will need to properly configure the torrent and limit yourself to watching videos over the Internet.
Torrent clients, even if you don’t download anything, can distribute files from your computer or simply exchange official information with the network. They also consume a lot of traffic Skype services(especially during video calling) and similar applications.

To reduce traffic consumption in your Internet browser, you can use them additional functions by data compression (for example, “Turbo” mode in Opera) or using additional plugins. However, if you watch videos and play games over the Internet, then it will be impossible to reduce traffic with such plugins.

Question from a user

Hello.

Tell me, how can I find out which programs are loading my Internet channel? The point is that although I have unlimited traffic, but a very slow speed tariff (only 500 KB/s, i.e. every kilobyte counts).

Previously, my torrent always downloaded at a speed of about 500 KB/s, but now something happened, as if someone was eating up my traffic. What can be done?

Good day.

Let's hope Elon Musk launches his free high-speed Satellite Internet and will cover the whole Earth with it...

In general, your question has some background: the fact is that the decrease in speed could not have occurred due to the fact that some program began to secretly use your network (although this is also possible) ...

Therefore, in this article I will show not only how you can find a program that “steals” traffic unnoticed, and how to limit its “appetites”, but I will also point out those points that may also be the cause of the load on the network. So...

Let's find out what programs and services the network is loaded with

Method number 1: through the task manager

If you have Windows 10, then in the task manager you can immediately find out in the same window the CPU load, memory, disk, and network load (which is very convenient!). For example, in the screenshot below, applications are sorted depending on the network load: as you can see, the main source is Utorrent...

Note: To open the task manager, use the Ctrl+Alt+Del or Ctrl+Shift+Esc key combination.

But in general, of course, I agree with many that the task manager is not informative and often does not show the whole picture. In addition, there are no options for limiting or fine-tuning network use.

Method No. 2: special. utilities

At all, similar utilities enough. Every other firewall will also be able to show you which applications are accessing the network. However, in this article I want to focus on one very skillful utility - NetLimiter!

One of the most best programs to control network traffic. After installing the program, it monitors absolutely all applications accessing the Internet.

With its help, you can manage traffic (limit it, block it) for each application separately.

In addition, NetLimiter keeps statistics on all connections, and you can always turn to the utility to view graphs and tables.

After installing and launching NetLimiter, click on the "DL Rate" column and you will see all the most "gluttonous" programs (in terms of traffic) in this moment. An example is shown in the screenshot below: as you can see, the lion's share of traffic is used by Utorrent.

NetLimiter - sorted by download traffic

In general, by carefully reading the list of programs presented in NetLimiter, you will find out which applications load your network and “zero” traffic. Below we will look at how you can limit the appetites of a program.

How to limit the download/upload speed of any program on the Internet

Let's say that in the list in NetLimiter you found that "sinister" program that eats up all your traffic. For my example I will take Utorrent and I'll limit its download speed .

Please note that NetLimiter has a special columns with "Limit": DL - download speed limit, UL - upload speed limit. Each application already has a basic limit of 5 KB/s - if you check the box for such a limit, the speed of the selected application will be limited to 5 KB/s...

Let's say I want to limit the download speed of Utorrent to 100 KB/s (after all, the default 5 KB/s is not always suitable).

To begin, right-click on the program and select “Add rule” from the pop-up menu. See example below.

Note: Pay attention to the "Direction" column. By default this column is "In" - i.e. incoming download traffic. It is possible to select "Out" - i.e. outgoing (upload speed), and also limit it.

Speed ​​limit limit (IN - means incoming traffic, OUT - outgoing)

Please note that now in general table NetLimiter is reflected by Utorrent with a checkbox for the limit of 100 KB/s.

Download limit set

I'll show you a screenshot (see below) for a visual representation from Utorrent itself - overall speed downloads of all added torrents do not exceed 100 KB/s (despite the presence large number seeds and high-speed Internet access).

After the “cherished checkbox” was unchecked in NetLimiter, the download speed immediately began to increase (see screenshot below). Those. The program very effectively allows you to limit and “regulate” the speed of application access to the network.

A few words about the router, provider, and the Utorrent program itself

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that everything above settings may not give a practical result, and your Internet speed will leave much to be desired. Why?

1) There may be problems with the provider

It’s not uncommon for download speeds on Utorrent to drop due to a problem with the provider (for example, you may be switched to an emergency branch while the main one is under repair).

In addition, if your provider has quite a lot of clients in your home/area, it is possible that, for example, in the evening hours you will see “drawdowns” in download speed (the fact is that in the evenings and on weekends the majority of people go online , and not always bandwidth enough for everyone...).

To help! How to find out the Internet speed on a computer -

2) Pay attention to the router (and other devices that you have connected to the network)

If you have several devices connected to the Internet (for example, in addition to a PC, you may also have a laptop, phone, tablet, etc.) - pay attention to them too.

Pay attention to the router (if you use one): as a rule, in its settings you can find out which devices are connected to it, how they use the network, etc. There you can often limit the appetites of any of the devices connected to it.

For reference! Detailed installation and router setup:

Router operation status: how many devices are connected, what is the download and upload speed // TENDA

3) Pay attention to the Utorrent program itself

It is worth recognizing that sometimes Utorrent is a very capricious program that may simply “refuse” to download a file at normal speed... There can be many reasons for this: either the wrong version of the program was selected or the optimal settings were not specified.

I have several blog articles dedicated to this topic. Therefore, if you have checked and configured all of the above, but there is no result, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with a couple of materials, the links to which are indicated below.

Why uTorrent downloads at low speed: torrents take a very long time to load -

Analogues of uTorrent: select a program to download torrents -

Additions are welcome.