Updating the Task Manager view for networking
Task Manager is one of the first places to which administrators generally turn when it becomes necessary to review
what’s happening on the network. Is the system consuming an inordinate
amount of network resources? If so, what process is responsible for
that consumption?
In Windows 8, Task Manager has been completely overhauled and now
provides information in a much friendlier way than in previous versions
of Windows. To start Task Manager, from the desktop, either press and
hold or right-click any blank area of the taskbar at the bottom of the
screen. When the shortcut menu appears, choose Task Manager.
In Figure 1, you can see that opening the Performance tab in Task Manager and selecting Ethernet displays network traffic flowing both into and out of the local system.
However, the Performance tab’s network graph doesn’t give you much detail about which processes are consuming that bandwidth. The Processes tab gives you this information. In Figure 2,
note that every process in Windows 8 includes detailed information
regarding the resources that process is using, including the amount of
bandwidth in use. On the sample system, you can see that the Internet
Explorer process is responsible for the current bandwidth load.
