NetMonitor Pro

A feature-rich, real-time network speed monitor & dashboard for Windows
Built with WPF · .NET 8 · MVVM · LiveCharts · SQLite

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✨ Overview

NetMonitor Pro is a sleek, always-on-top network speed overlay and full-featured dashboard application for Windows. It provides real-time upload/download speed monitoring, comprehensive network adapter details, internet speed testing, usage history tracking, and smart alerts — all wrapped in a modern dark-themed UI.

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🚀 Features

📊 Real-Time Floating Overlay

• Always-on-top speed widget that displays live download (↓) and upload (↑) speeds — enforced via Win32 SetWindowPos(HWND_TOPMOST) every 2 seconds so the overlay never gets buried behind the taskbar or other apps
• Draggable — click and drag to reposition anywhere on screen
• Taskbar-aware snapping — auto-positions near the taskbar (supports all taskbar positions: top, bottom, left, right)
• Adjustable opacity — slider to control overlay transparency (30%–100%)
• Click-through mode — optional mode to pass mouse clicks through the overlay
• Glow effects — text glow animations for download (green) and upload (blue) indicators
• Gradient background — dark navy-to-deep-blue gradient with drop shadow

🖥️ Full Dashboard

A multi-page dashboard with sidebar navigation:

Page	Description
📊 Overview	Real-time speed cards (Download, Upload, Session ↓, Session ↑) + live speed chart
📈 Usage History	30-day bar chart of daily download/upload data usage
🌐 Network Info	Detailed view of all network adapters with IP, gateway, MAC, link speed
⚡ Speed Test	One-click internet speed test with download, upload, and latency results
⚙ Settings	Full configuration panel for all app behaviors and alerts

⚡ Speed Test

• Download speed — tests against Cloudflare and OVH endpoints with real-time progress
• Upload speed — measures upload throughput via POST to Cloudflare
• Latency (Ping) — ICMP ping to Google DNS (8.8.8.8), Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), and OpenDNS (208.67.222.222)
• Live progress bar — shows real-time speed during test with cancel support
• History tracking — all speed test results are persisted to SQLite for historical review

🔔 Smart Alerts

• Speed Drop Alert — notifies when download speed falls below a configurable threshold (default: 1.0 Mbps)
• Data Cap Alert — warns when daily data usage exceeds a custom limit (default: 10 GB)
• Disconnect Alert — instant notification when network connectivity is lost
• Rate-limited — alerts are throttled to avoid notification spam (30-second cooldown)

🌐 Network Adapter Details

• Full enumeration of all network interfaces (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Virtual, etc.)
• Displays for each adapter:
  • Status (Up / Down)
  • Type (Ethernet, Wireless80211, etc.)
  • IPv4 Address & Subnet Mask
  • IPv6 Address
  • Default Gateway
  • DNS Servers
  • MAC Address
  • Link Speed (Gbps / Mbps / Kbps)
  • Bytes Sent / Received (cumulative)

💾 Data Persistence (SQLite)

• Daily Usage — tracks download/upload bytes per day per adapter with peak speeds
• Session Logs — records session start/end times with average and total transfer stats
• Process History — per-process bandwidth usage tracking by date
• Network Events — logs speed drops, disconnects, and threshold alerts with severity levels
• Speed Test History — stores all speed test results including download, upload, latency, jitter, and packet loss

⚙️ Configurable Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Always on Top	Keep overlay above all windows	✅ On
Launch on Startup	Auto-start with Windows via Registry (HKCU\...\Run)	❌ Off
Start Minimized	Launch to tray without showing overlay	❌ Off
Click-Through	Pass mouse clicks through overlay	❌ Off
Network Adapter	Select which adapter to monitor (or auto-detect)	Auto
Update Interval	Polling frequency (250ms–5000ms)	1000ms
Overlay Opacity	Background transparency	92%
Alert on Disconnect	Notify on connection loss	✅ On
Alert on Speed Drop	Notify when speed falls below threshold	✅ On
Speed Drop Threshold	Minimum acceptable speed	1.0 Mbps
Alert on Data Cap	Notify when daily usage exceeds limit	❌ Off
Daily Data Cap	Maximum daily data usage	10 GB
Dark Mode	Dark theme enabled	✅ On

🎨 System Tray Integration

• Custom tray icon — uses the app's branded PNG icon (with fallback to generated icon)
• Double-click to toggle overlay visibility
• Right-click context menu:
  • 👁 Show / Hide Overlay (checkmark ✓ indicates current visibility state)
  • 📊 Open Dashboard
  • ❌ Quit
• Runs minimized in the tray when overlay is hidden

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🏗️ Architecture

NetMonitor Pro follows Clean Architecture principles with a modular project structure:

NetMonitorPro.sln
├── src/
│   ├── NetMonitorPro.App         # WPF Application (Views, ViewModels, Converters, DI)
│   ├── NetMonitorPro.Core        # Business logic (Services, Models, Interfaces)
│   ├── NetMonitorPro.Data        # Data persistence (SQLite Entities, Repositories)
│   ├── NetMonitorPro.Native      # Windows-specific APIs (Taskbar detection via P/Invoke)
│   └── logo/                     # App & tray icon assets
└── tests/                        # Unit tests (coming soon)

Key Design Patterns

• MVVM — ViewModels use CommunityToolkit.Mvvm with [ObservableProperty] and [RelayCommand]
• Dependency Injection — Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection wires all services, ViewModels, and Views
• Event-Driven — NetworkMonitorService fires StatsUpdated events consumed by ViewModels and AlertService
• Interface Segregation — core services implement interfaces (INetworkMonitorService, ISettingsService)
• Repository Pattern — DatabaseService abstracts all SQLite persistence via sqlite-net-pcl

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Framework	.NET 8 (Windows)
UI	WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
MVVM Toolkit	CommunityToolkit.Mvvm 8.2.2
Charts	LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.WPF 2.0
System Tray	H.NotifyIcon.Wpf 2.1.3
Database	SQLite via sqlite-net-pcl
Serialization	Newtonsoft.Json
DI Container	Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection 8.0.1
Native Interop	P/Invoke (Shell32 APPBARDATA, User32 SetWindowPos)

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📦 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11
• .NET 8 SDK — Download
• Visual Studio 2022 (recommended) or any .NET-compatible IDE

Build & Run

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/nikhil914/NetSpeedMeterV2.git
cd NetSpeedMeterV2

# Restore dependencies
dotnet restore

# Build the solution
dotnet build

# Run the application
dotnet run --project src/NetMonitorPro.App

Quick Build Scripts (Double-Click)

Script	What it does
build.bat	Publishes a self-contained single-file EXE to dist/ and opens the folder
build_installer.bat	Publishes EXE + builds Inno Setup installer to installer/NetMonitorPro_Setup.exe

Publish (Self-Contained)

dotnet publish src/NetMonitorPro.App -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -o ./publish

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📁 Data Storage

All application data is stored in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\NetMonitorPro\
├── settings.json       # User preferences (JSON)
└── netmonitor.db       # Usage history, speed tests, events (SQLite)

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/awesome-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add awesome feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/awesome-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

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Made with ❤️ by Nikhil