There seems to be little correlation between the numbers shown by the program Net Monitor X and actual network and/or Internet performance. The default settings show a little transparent blue window floating atop everything. Fine and good. I click the top arrow and numbers appear describing the current thoroughput.
This fluctuates between 500 and 2 KBps randomly (I am on an overloaded 10BaseT network supplied by a T3) when there is nothing running that might exchange information with the outside. Now, I reason, thoroughput might be the maximum transfer rate possible at that time (don't know how iut would be calculated without significant dataflow - I ran an old program called Ridge to see what sort of packets were coming and going, and very, very few were compared with browsing the Internet). Fine, let's get a more useful number - I set it to display (in text, so now I suppose the graph is still going on thoroughput) the interval data - how much data has come through in the last sample. Now the numbers are much lower, but still amazingly random.
If I open Safari and ask it to load a few tabbed bookmarks, the numbers change to between 10 and 500 KBps. Still jerking about like a salmon gulping air.
I make a file transfer from my roommate's shared folder and it finishes a 38 MB download in 8 seconds (~5 MBps). The interval data stayed between 10 and 500 KBps on its little wave-and-spike routine. Ridiculous.
How have other users of NetMonitor X come to think of the program?
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