Digital Home Thoughts: Inspect Your Home Network with Speed Meter Pro

"Is someone downloading a large file or streaming video? Is your cordless phone interfering with your wireless connection? Or, is an application or neighbor stealing bandwidth? With Speed Meter Pro, take the guesswork out of trying to figure out what is causing slowdowns. This powerful software utility helps you diagnose and manage your wireless, network and Internet connection so you can optimize your connected experience. Scans across your entire network including connected computers, wired and wireless networks and Internet connection. Identifies the source of network slowdowns, saving you troubleshooting time. Enables you to address problems quickly and optimize your network for maximum speed and productivity. Proactively monitors your network to detect issues that need immediate attention."

I can see this tool being quite useful in detecting if anyone is siphoning off some of your bandwidth through some vulnerability in your wireless router or some such, or if you chose not to lock it down (I can't imagine why one would do that but that's a different story). Plus, this could also be a nice piece of software to help diagnoze if any of your machines have been owned because it would then be chatting away on the net without you having done anything. And you can use a full version for free for 7 days before making a decision to buy or not.