NetBalancer Editor's Review

Give the proper priority to your internet activities with this useful Windows networking utility.

Even in today's world of high speed internet and wide pipes, prioritizing and monitoring what takes up the bulk of that personal bandwidth can be important.  If you have large files that you need to transfer quickly then pulling back incidental network traffic can be important. If you have small things that you'd rather move in front of that large file transfer, throttling the large transfer in favor of the low hanging fruit may provide the win.  That's why I like NetBalancer. It’s a network utility for Windows.


NetBalancer allows you to browse and complete any internet activity easily, even when transferring huge files from one end point to another.  All you need to do is lower their network priority with NetBalancer. You can use NetBalancer to set network transfer rate priorities for any application, and monitor that traffic.

Applications with a higher network priority will gain more traffic bandwidth than those with a lower one. You can set download and upload speed limits for a process. You can manage priorities and limits for each network adaptor (wired vs. wireLESS, for example).  In short, you can define detailed network traffic rules.  You can group local network computers together, and synchronize and balance their network traffic.

Pro’s: Free, monitor traffic, security features, works for both 32bit and 64bit operating systems

Con’s: Free version is limited to 5 processes and rules, has no separate network adapters management and no support for Network Grouping

Conclusion: NetBalancer provides security settings in order to protect your traffic priorities.  You can password protect your settings to prevent unwanted or unwarranted changes.  You can monitor all traffic going in and out of your machine.

The app provides a volume of information, including a system tray monitor and graphical representation of both traffic coming in and out of your adapters. While the free version is limited, the paid version is reasonably priced and depending on the amount of bandwidth you consume every month, may be well worth the purchase price.