bandwidth consumed

If you are running Windows, go to your Control Panel and click on your Network icon. Fiddle around with it until you get a popup telling you the number of bytes sent and received.

You can also look at your network traffic in a graphical way by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete and clicking on the Task Manager button when you get the popup. The Task Manager popup that follows has a number of tabs that show how busy your CPU is as well as well as your network connection. Play around with it to see what else the Task Manager can tell you.

Windows has other built-in tools you can use, too, but you'll need Admin priviledges on the account to make use of them.

Ok, so being a Mechanical type, I have an un-ending fascination with graphical interfaces. Try the "Cool Beans" system info from the below link. It will provide a real-time CPU usage icon and in the networks tab will show upload/download totals as well as current usage graph. As we live in "End-of-the-Earth", Oregon, USA, this feature is useful when complaining to the ISP about service issues.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/220564

Best on 'ya,

GLB

As is usually the problem is, the exact thing that you are trying to determine is not stated in your question.

If you want to know how much traffic is being generated by someone browsing your web site is one question (with an easy answer) or how much traffic are you generating while you are browsing is quite another. In the case of a web site go to your site statistics and it will be spelled out for you. If you are interested in your effect on the system I don't think that right clicking on your network icon and going to status is going to give you a true indication of what is transpiring on your computer. I do know that when you send information such as email it is broken up into packets and sent on available routers to hasten the flow, something like a parallel circuit. I think your router becomes part of that system.

Someone correct me if I am missing something.

If you are using Windows try a free program called Wireshark, I used this in an internet communications class to analyze internet traffic for 8 computers in a lab.