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Below you will find our most frequently asked questions about tbbMeter. If you think something is missing, please let us know.
The green bars show the traffic being downloaded from the Internet to your computer. The red bars show traffic that is sent from your computer to the Internet. Yellow is shown when data is being both sent to and received from your network card. You can see the different colours in this screenshot:
Open the tbbMeter menu and go to the "Statistics" option and then select "Define Alarms". Enter a friendly name for the alarm that you will remember, and tick the "Enabled" box. Set the time and date to be the beginning of your usage period. Depending on the ISP, this may be the first of the month or it may be the day on which you are billed. Set the duration to "1 Month" and tick the "Repeat Alarm" option and set this to "Monthly".
Some service providers count only download data where as others count both upload and download. Set whichever applies and then set the units field to "GB" (GigaBytes). Enter the Trigger amount (25GB in this example) and choose a sound file that you would like played when you reach the limit,
When you start the stopwatch tbbMeter will record how much data you download and upload and report this back to you when you stop the stopwatch with the speeds recorded doing this. You can use this to manually measure the speed of a download and to give an indication of the average and peak download rates that you received in the time that the stopwatch was recording.
The ping tool allows you to monitor the latency between your computer and other hosts on the Internet. If you leave it running accidentally it will automatically stop after 2 hours.
We have created a forum section where users can discuss tbbMeter and get help with any problems. Please click here to visit it.
tbbMeter has been designed to work on Windows XP and Windows Vista (both 32 and 64-bit versions). It also requires .NET 2.0 or a later version of the .NET Framework to be installed to work. If you do not have .NET you can usually get it from Windows Update or you can download it direct from Microsoft.
See this guide from Microsoft on how to tell which version is installed.
tbbMeter is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista. We may consider a future version for Apple computers if there is demand for it.
tbbMeter does not look at what you are downloading or uploading, only the amount of data that is actually sent. We may in future versions give the option to look at the type of data (e.g. web traffic, e-mail, peer-to-peer), but we won't look at the actual websites or actual files that you download.
tbbMeter performs passive monitoring of your connection to help you record statistics about your connection and usage. The isposure automated testing software does active testing to measure how good your connection is for different Internet services such as web browsing and VoIP traffic. The statistics generated will be used to build a larger picture of how broadband Britain truly performs.
Yes, but you may not have access to the full range of statistics when we launch the accompanying website.
To uninstall tbbMeter, please re-run the setup program. If you are not sure where you put this, you can download the latest version and use this to remove it. You may need to install the updated version before you can successfully uninstall.
You can uninstall tbbMeter from control panel, however this won't automatically remove the isposure automated testing software as this is installed as a separate entry. Re-running our installer will remove both tbbMeter and isposure, or you can remove both tbbMeter and isposure manually from control panel.
Yes. There is no limit on the kind of connection tbbMeter can monitor, and we have tested with both fast (Gigabit) and slow connections.
We will provide ISPs with anonymized statistical data and in some cases more specific data that will help them troubleshoot a problem. For example, we may be able to help a service provider identify poor performance affecting them in specific areas of the country.
Yes. We do a check at least once a day to see if there is a new version of the software and will give you the option to update if there is. We recommend installing updated versions when available.
We did! We wrote this application in-house so it would meet our specific needs and we can add exciting new features that you will find useful. We hope you like it. If you have any suggestions please let us know by e-mailing team@thinkbroadband.com
We are constantly improving our software and will will look in to any problems or bugs that you find. Please e-mail the details to team@thinkbroadband.com.
This error, usually accompanied by a number such as (0xc0000133) or (0xc0000135), is caused by not having a suitable version of .NET installed. Please ensure that you have .NET 2.0 or higher installed for tbbMeter to work. If you do not have .NET you can usually get it from Windows Update or you can download it direct from Microsoft.
See our dedicated page on fixing this problem.
Check that you have the latest drivers for your network card. Some older drivers (e.g. Belkin) are known not to provide the information required to track usage.
Please update tbbMeter to 0.9.3.7 or higher. To do this, right click on tbbMeter or click on the Menu button and then select "Check Version".