It seems like "How To" day, and for this particular item there are loads of possibilities. I chose for AnalogX Netstat Live (download, download-mirror). It does the job perfectly, is small in download (231KB) but requires a fair amount of system resources (16MB of RAM, pretty much for a tool of this size).
Monitor your Up- And Downstream Bandwidth
It hides in the system tray when minimized and it'll monitor your upload & download, but can also monitor CPU usage and do a ping/traceroute to a remote server.
Ping/Traceroute to remote server
There really are hundreds of alternatives, but the main reason I'm using this one over others? It looks old-school, sort of reminds me of a game made about ~10 years back, what was that named again ....
