When the program starts, it sits quietly in the menu bar until you need to view additional details.  A simple click on the menu bar brings up the status window.    The text that is shown in the menu bar is customizable and is changed through the Action menu in the upper right corner of the status window.   Dropping down this menu gives you access to the following options:

About mTraffic Stats – show version and other information about the program.

Show Help Tips – allows you to toggle on or off the help tips that show up when you hover your mouse over items on the status window.

Show Inactive Interfaces – allows you to toggle the display of inactive interfaces.

Show In Status Bar – allows you to select the information that displays in the main menu bar.

Refresh Interval – allows you to set the frequency by which the program updates data.

Load on Login – allows you to set the program to automatically start when you login to your computer.   It is recommended that you set this so that you can record all bandwidth.   Recording is not performed when the program is not running.

Show Startup Screen – allows you to toggle the popup window that opens when the program starts.

Quit mTrafficStats – closes the program

Interfaces

Interfaces are your connection to outside networks and mTrafficStats will record traffic automatically when they are connected to your computer.   Interfaces can have 4 states.

Primary – this is the interface that will be used by the system.  It is marked by a green circle.

Active – this is an interface that is connected and has an active IP address but may or may not be used by the system.  Typically the operating system uses primary interfaces and these may not be used.    They are marked by an orange circle.

Connected – these are interfaces that are connected but do not have an active IP address.  These are marked by a gray circle.

Inactive – interfaces that are not connected, but have been at some point in the past.   These have no indicator next to their name.

Clicking on an interface will show the Activity and Usage information for that interface.  These screen will show different information depending on the state of the interface.

In addition to showing detail about an interface, you can also take three actions by clicking on the icons below the interface list:

You can display a history graph of usage for the selected interface.

You can clear all history for the selected interface.

You an delete the reference for the selected interface and remove it from the interface list

The Activity display give you information about the selected interface.  There are two actions that you can take with this information.

You can click on the graph to toggle between sent and received views.

You can click on the Peak value to toggle between bytes per second and bits per second.    Note that this will also change the setting being used to show the value in the main menu bar.

The Usage Quota display provides details about where you are within the monthly bandwidth that you have available to you.  You configure the display by pressing the Settings button and entering the start day and monthly quota allotment.   See below for more details.The inverted triangle that sits above the quota bar represents the day of the month that you are currently at.   The graph represents the amount of usage that you have consumed towards your quota.

The values below the graph represent your current usage and the total that you have available.If the graph is beyond the inverted triangle, then the color of the graph will be red to indicate that you are running ahead of your quota and should consider slowing your consumption.If the graph is before the inverted triangle, then it will be green indicating that you are within your limits.   A yellow bar will indicate that you are within 10% of your allotted bandwidth for the current day of the month.

Pressing the Settings button allows you to configure your monthly quota per the contract that you have with your provider.   There are two settings that you can change:

Start Day – this is the day of the month that your billing cycle starts.   It defaults to 0, which is the same as the first day of the month.

Monthly Quota – this is the quota allowance from your provider in MB.   A value of 5000 is 5 GB.

Click save after making changes to the settings.   Cancel will discard your changes.