Track Download Traffic Usage

[PurdueSi]

I understand this is loooong after the fact, but I don't think the math in this post is correct. Given that setting cumulative=1 records the total number of BYTES, here are the correct conversion factors.

1 gigabyte = 1 073 741 824 bytes

1 gigabit = 134 217 728 bytes

You can reproduce what I've done by going to google and typing "gigabytes to bytes".

[Dave_W]

What? No, that's not right.

One gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Full stop.

What I got wrong was my language - I said that Bitmeter records in GiB (which is true) and that 1 GiB is 1,073,741,824 bytes (which is also true), but then I said that GiB means GigaBIT (which is false).

In fact GiB is "gibibyte", apparently - everything else I said was right, though. The conversion from gigabytes (or gibibytes) to gigabits doesn't work with the maths that shiraz07 set out, only from gigabytes to gibibytes. If you go back and read my posts substituting the word "gibibyte" for "gigabit" they're all correct.

...I think.

[jsmorley]

What? No, that's not right.

One gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Full stop.

What I got wrong was my language - I said that Bitmeter records in GiB (which is true) and that 1 GiB is 1,073,741,824 bytes (which is also true), but then I said that GiB means GigaBIT (which is false).

In fact GiB is "gibibyte", apparently - everything else I said was right, though. The conversion from gigabytes (or gibibytes) to gigabits doesn't work with the maths that shiraz07 set out, only from gigabytes to gibibytes. If you go back and read my posts substituting the word "gibibyte" for "gigabit" they're all correct.

...I think.

It all depends on the context you use the term gigabyte in. Generally in the sense of "bytes" of RAM or disk space, it is not just 1,000,000,000. It's one of those cases where the technical standard meaning is often "honored in the breach".

http://www.google.com/search?q=convert+gigabytes+to+bytes

[Dave_W]

Sure - but that was what I said in my post, wasn't it? It's confusing, because I talked about gigabits instead of gibibytes, but here it is again with that mistake corrected:

Both Rainmeter and Bitmeter are keeping track of every byte that you download. Rainmeter is then dividing by 1,000,000,000 to give you the figure in GIGAbytes (GB), BitMeter is dividing by 1,073,741,824 to give you the figure in GIBIbytes (GiB). The problem is that people often confuse the two and write GB when they really mean GiB - you'll have to dig into your ISP's t&cs to find out if your download cap is GB or GiB and then decide what figure you should use.

I think this is the same as what you're saying - when people say "gigabytes" they may not mean 1,000,000,000 (which is technically a gigabyte) but 1,073,741,824 (which is technically a gibibyte).

I added needless confusion with all my gigabit nonsense, but the above is what it boils down to I think.


Edit: Unless you're just picking me up on my statement "A gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Full stop." in which case...yeah, fine, I guess. People do use it to mean something other than 1,000,000,000 bytes from time to time (albeit not consistently, hence the classic example of buying the 400 gigabyte hdd and seeing it recognised as 372"GB" by the system).

It's always seemed wrong to me that common usage dictates meaning in language, particularly where the technical meaning of a word is so obvious. No matter how many people I get to refer to a mile as a centimetre, the word centimetre still means a hundredth of a metre - and will never legitimately mean mile, in my view. But bleh, that's a wide-ranging philosophical discussion for another day!

[jsmorley]

"Edit: Unless you're just picking me up on my statement "A gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Full stop." in which case...yeah, fine, I guess. People do use it to mean something other than 1,000,000,000 bytes from time to time (albeit not consistently, hence the classic example of buying the 400 gigabyte hdd and seeing it recognised as 372"GB" by the system)."

Yes. We are saying the same thing.

[mhinckley3]

Another thing you can do is incorporate the date and time the statistics were last reset. I used a couple of measures and a meter from shiraz07's code and added a RegExp measure to get the date and time from Rainmeter.ini. Thanks to jsmorley for RainRegExp. It was a great help in getting the RegExp statement correct. See Screenshot and Code below.

Code: Select all

[Month] 
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\WebParser.dll
Url=file://#FilePath#\Rainmeter.ini
RegExp="(?siU)Since=.* (.*) (.*) (.*:.*):.* 20(.*)\r"
Substitute="Jan":"1","Feb":"2","Mar":"3","Apr":"4","May":"5","Jun":"6","Jul":"7","Aug":"8","Sep":"9","Oct":"10","Nov":"11","Dec":"12"
stringindex=1

[Day]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\WebParser.dll
Url=[Month]
StringIndex=2

[Year]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\WebParser.dll
Url=[Month]
StringIndex=4

[Time]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\WebParser.dll
Url=[Month]
StringIndex=3

[DL]
Measure=NetIn
Cumulative=1

[GBConverter]
Measure=Calc
Formula=DL/1000000000

[NetMeter]
Meter=STRING
solidcolor=0,235,255,1
MeasureName=GBConverter
MeasureName2=Month
MeasureName3=Day
MeasureName4=Year
MeasureName5=Time
X=107
Y=R
FontColor=#NetInColor#
FontFace=#Font#
FontSize=#NetworkFontHeight3#
StringStyle=NORMAL
StringAlign=Center
AntiAlias=0
NumOfDecimals=2
Text=%1 GB since %2/%3/%4 %5
LeftMouseDownAction=!execute [!RainmeterResetStats][!RainmeterRefresh]

[Sunil237]

I'm gonna create a new thread.
http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5270

If you'd like to help me out too