As all my projects seem to have started out – in the midst of studying and a growling hunger for java – I was hit by a flash of inspiration: an obedient little tool that sits quietly in the background and makes sure you aren’t running close to your Resnet Quota.

For those of you who don’t know, residences on UBC campus are supplied a *very* high-speed (>1 MB/s) connection to the world, with a cap of 6 GB per 24 hours. Sure, you could manually check their website at www.resnet.ubc.ca every once in a while and get your stats (you’ve got to be on Resnet to see it), but that’s tedious and interruptive. You definately realize when you’ve hit your cap though, as you get shoved in their “penalty box” until your usage in the last day drops below the quota. And the penalty of a throttled 50KB/s (think dial-up) connection makes you notice, but a little too late.

So I present to you the Resnet Quota Monitor. Written for Java, using the new TrayIcon class introduced in 1.6. It is currently translated for English and Chinese (simplified).

It checks every once in a while, and will give you a balloon-style warning at 75%, 90%, and 100% of quota usage.

Possible updates will be:

• increase language support: chinese (traditional), japanese, korean, additional by request
• check for software updates and notify if any
• synchronize tool update time with Resnet’s statistic update time
• saving/editing configuration settings

For now, it’s functional enough to be used, so as soon as I find a way to host it, expect it to be available here soon!