Visual indication of network activity

Question

is there a simple application which can sit on top of a fullscreen game to give me an indicator of when there is a lot of network activity? I can only seem to find system tray apps or programs which work outside of fullscreen games. Preferably something transparent so i can see through it.

A little background info: I used to have my PC sitting sideways on my desk so I can see lights from the network card. The lights stopped working a while ago and all I need is a little blinking application to tell me when there is activity. I do not need a detailed graph or bandwidth usage, just activity notification. I've looked everywhere for something, maybe you guys are better at searching than me.

Answer 1

Maybe this nifty little app will come in handy:

Network Lights

Network Lights is a Windows program, which blinks keyboard LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) indicating outgoing and incoming network packets on network interface.

Network Lights lets you monitor network activity (upload/download) from your keyboard ScrollLock and NumLock indicators. Each LED will flicker when network traffic is detected.

This utility is a standalone executable. Run the program, you'll see a new system tray icon. Now you can monitor your network traffic using the ScrollLock and NumLock leds on your keyboard. Use the system tray icon (click the mouse) to customize program settings.

Network Lights is free, open source, and portable.

Answer 2

you can force pretty much any application (and indeed a network traffic monitor) to be always on top (e.g. with a window manager, most of them can also make the window transparent, check Eusing's Auto Window Manager, it's free), however, most likely they will be knocked off by a fullscreen game.

which game btw?

Answer 3

The Logitech G15 keyboard is great for this. It can run all sorts of little programs in its LCD monitor. I use mine mostly to look at CPU and RAM usage (and to get IM notifications). It's a bit pricey, but it's a great keyboard overall (subjective).

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logitech_G15