packets to bytes?

The Win2k Series and WinXP as well I believe. Everyone probably knows how to turn on the little system tray icon of network activity. All it does is blink during packets sent/receive. No big deal, just was wondering since I have a system with two network cards in it why one monitor shows me total packets (6,000 sent/ 8,000 receive) and another shows me total bytes (2,323,522 bytes sent/ 5,234,221 bytes received).
I really like seeing total bytes rather than packets, but am at a lost at how to switch it. I've looked over the web, even Microsoft's knowledge base. Is this something that is done by the driver installation or is it a reg hack or GUI configuration? The total bytes, helps me spot any strange activity (example, sending 10GB of data a day when the norm is only 10MB)

Actually you should be asking how many bytes to a packet, do some research on TCP/IP and a basic thing is very real bytes make a packet and a packet cannot make a byte. And now I'm hungry Uh oh late lunch.

Whenever running across stats like this, I usually just multiply the number of packets by the MTU. No, it isn't exactly accurate, but it does give you a worst case analysis of how much data was transmitted. This of course basically assumes that all of the packets are the same size and that with the exception of perhaps the beginning/end packets, and that most of them will be around the MTU (your maximum transmission unit) or the largest available packet size (your computer stats should be oblivious to if the packet had to be further fragmented).

Would be curious to know if anyone had any better ideas...

Neb

Basic idea there are so many bits to a Byte, so many Bytes to a Packet and the level 56k, 128k etc independent of MTU are constant. So install a packet sniffer to see the Bytes and then other software to see the bits. Question seems to be of the transport layer?

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by Palemoon
Basic idea there are so many bits to a Byte, so many Bytes to a Packet and the level 56k, 128k etc independent of MTU are constant. So install a packet sniffer to see the Bytes and then other software to see the bits. Question seems to be of the transport layer?

---

I dont follow...

Is why you have more to learn, bits, bytes, packets are just that stuff of the transport layer, go figure :) and humm can even apply to other layers. Others here that will ageee on your quote Sudo, the question was not real clear and the order well was reversed in the original question, nap time get back here when I can, I'm happy happy happy :) <----Seee

the suggestion to use the mtu is the best advice without monitoring and establishing statistics for normal traffic. the reason being is that virtually every packet is going to be of a differing lengths. in some cases you are going to "max-out" with every packet during a transaction (ie. downloading a file). by using the mtu you can get a guaranteed ceiling for the amount of traffic...but it may be significantly high for a realistic valuation.

OK Everyone is missing the point and knightmb I want to know too. If you look at the system tray ICON the default is listed in packets. I have seen system where when you point on to the ICON (in the system tray) ( we are not talking math here) you get byte sent and received rather then packets. I have seen this too thought it was nice to be listed that way rather then packets. but have not had a chance to research it. He not talking math here with MTUs ect. it is a software configuration in M$

Well i dunno bout you but my winXP pro has what u are looking for

it just tells in bytes how much, when I hover over it with my mouse..

I did understand the question, I in fact have the same problem. I have seen some that reports bytes sent and others that report packets and I was passing on what I use when I need some kind of a byte translation. I would suspect that it is probably the driver for your NIC that is making the determination of which statistic is used, and since I don't know of a way to change the stat reported by the icon, I suggested something else to try that could give you the same information.

Looking around in the registry under HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP, it seems there is a performance category that references a library (perhaps that is the culprit?). This reminded me, there are performance monitors that come with Win2k/XP that will allow you to grab TCP/IP stats (Performance under Administrative Tools). Click the + sign and chose network interface, there are several different options there that all measure bytes/second, is that good enough?

There was also a little tool I saw mentioned on techtv that was kinda neat:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network.htm

The netstat live gives you a graphical representation of the amount of data you are sending/receiving and a running total of how much you have used.

Neb

Palemoon> ummm, are you really confused or really tired. Yes there are 8 bits to a byte, but how many bites are there to a packet??? If I tell you I sent out 10 packets, how in the hell can you tell me how many bytes I sent? If you can show me, I would love to know, because a TCP/IP packet can be anywhere from 24 bytes (just a header) on up to something like 64K (don't remember right off hand, anyone can feel free to correct me on the size). A UDP packet is smaller.. An ICMP packet is even smaller. And we haven't even gotten into netbios, IPX, SMB, etc. type packets.

knightmb> I am not positive, but I believe it depends on the device and its drivers. I couldn't find anything on the knowledge base either, but on the few XP machines here, the Intel lan cards show one statistic, and the Linksys cards show the other, so I think it is related to the drivers.

Thanks everyone for all the help and comments. I thought maybe it was a driver thing as well, but as you can see from the attached picture of device manager, they are both "3com" network cards, although not exactly the same model. I haven't updated the drivers to the latest from 3com, just using the M$ drivers. It does sound like a driver issue though. If I find anything, I'll be sure to post it here for the others that were curious.

This is the side by side screenshot, one being packets the other bytes. Still a puzzle for me how it got that way or if it can be changed :)