More Information About Network Reports

The Network Report helps you stay on top of computer use in your home. You can't always be there to monitor computer activity, but the Network Report gives you some insight on daily computer use in your home.


Program Usage
The Program Usage list shows each software program that was used on a computer for the previous day. It also shows how long each program was used, as well as what time periods during the day each program was used. This is a great way to see if homework is getting done, or if computer games or instant messaging are being used instead.

Only programs that are actively used are included in this report. If an application is running in the background, it is not included. For example, an anti-virus or firewall software application will not be included in the report, but word processing or instant messaging programs are included.

If programs were added or removed, there will be a list showing which programs were added and removed along with the times at which this happened.



Computer Health
The Computer Health section shows the most recently reported status for your computer's Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall, and Windows Update programs for the day of the report. It shows an icon representing overall state, the program's name and version number, and a message about the current state.

If a particular type of program is not installed at all, it will also tell you that so you know what you should install on your computer to best protect it from threats.



Web Browser Usage
The Web Browser Usage list shows the Internet sites visited by a computer for the previous day. It monitors only those sites accessed by a Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox 3 Web browser. At this time, it does not monitor Web sites that are accessed by other Web browsers, such as Safari or Flock.

Paired with the Program Usage list, you can see not only the Web sites visited, but how long the Web browser was used. And paired with the Network Download Usage graph, you can see the time of day that most of the computer use occurred; during the day, or in the middle of the night.



Network Download Usage
The Network Download Usage graph shows network usage for a computer for the previous day. Network Download Usage represents how often a computer accesses something on the network. The bars on the graph do not represent exact numbers, but are rounded up or down to the nearest megabyte to show a representation of the network traffic generated by a computer.

Network download traffic is generated several ways, such as when a computer accesses the Internet, prints to a shared printer, or accesses a file shared on another computer in the network.