gHacks technology news » network tools http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:11:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Monitor your Network the Open Source way with Etherape http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/monitor-your-network-the-open-source-way-with-etherape/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/monitor-your-network-the-open-source-way-with-etherape/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:49:03 +0000 Jack Wallen http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10086 Every network administrator needs a good network monitor for network management. But with so many to choose from it’s hard to know which one is best. This especially applies to the open source world. Go to Freshmeat.net and you will find 191 entries for open source network analyzers and network tools. Of those many are console based. Of those entries one monitor stands out as both powerful and easy to use. That tool? Etherape.

Etherape is a graphical network monitoring tool based on etherman that features link-layer, tcp, and ip modes. Etherape is a real time monitor who’s graphic representation instantly changes as network traffic goes in and out. You can use Etherape live or have it read from a dump file. Etherape supports Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices so you shouldn’t have any problem getting it to work on your network.

Installing

Installing Etherape is simple. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for “etherape” and select the entry when it appears. Apply the changes to install the application. If you prefer to go the command line route you can isse the command “sudo apt-get install etherape”. Once you have the application installed you can start Etherape by issuing the command etherape from a command line. You can also start Etherape from the Applications menu by looking in the Tools | System Tools submenus.

The Main Window

When you first open up Etherape (you will need the root password) you will see a blank window with some buttons and menus. At this point you are not capturing any packets because you haven’t instructed Etherape what interfaces to use.

Configure Etherape Interfaces

Configure Etherape Interfaces

In order to configure the interface click on the Capture menu and then click in the Interfaces sub-menu. Select the interface your machine uses to continue. Note that, as of this writing, Etherape does not support the Wifi0 interface. If you are using wireless you will most likely be able to use ath0.

Once you have configured the interface select the Mode type from the same menu you found the Interfaces entry.

Etherape will immediately begin capturing packets. You will see the large black window quickly fill with traffic. Depending upon your network your window can fill up very quickly. You will also notice that Etherape contains a color-coded legend.

Etherape Capturing Packets

Etherape Capturing Packets

By default CUPS and Domain are blue, WWW, TCP, ICMP are red, IMAP2 is purple, and POP3 is yellow. These colors can be changed in the Preferences window to whatever you like.

As you can see (in the image to the right) there is a lot of external traffic. But what if you only want to monitor internal traffic? Simple In the Preferences window click on the Diagram tab. You will see a small text area labeled “Capture Filter”. In this text area you will enter something similar to: ip and src net 192.168 and dst net 192.168 (where 192.168 is the first two sections of your internal network addressing.)

Once you enter that information, click Save, and the preferences window will go away. Etherape will now start capturing only your internal traffic.

Reading From Files

Etherape can read files from the tcpdump application. But you must run tcpdump with the -n and -w flags. The tcpdump command would be run like so: tcpdump -n -w dump_file. Once you are satisfied you have enough information you can stop the dump with ctrl-c. Once you have your dump file you can open it by going to File and then selected Open. The captured packets will display in real time as they were captured during tcpdump’s run.

Final Thoughts

Etherape is the perfect tool for monitoring network traffic. Not only is it simple to use, it gives you instant output as traffic comes in and out of your network.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/monitor-your-network-the-open-source-way-with-etherape/feed/ 0 Server Monitoring Software NetTools http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/13/server-monitoring-software/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/13/server-monitoring-software/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:27:56 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=6117 NetTools is another server monitoring software that shows promise. The main advantage of NetTools is at the same time its biggest disadvantage. The software program runs on a Windows computer which means that it’s virtually impossible to let it monitor servers 24/7 unless the computer is always on.

The Server Monitoring Software however is offering a wealth of tools and options to monitor networks, servers and websites of which some are restricted to the commercial version of the monitoring software. The user can add a number of IPs or domain names that should be monitored by the software. It monitors response time and packets in real time and graphs that display the data as well.

Alerts can be set if the host is not responding or if the server response time or packet loss rate reaches a certain number. Four events can be configured: Message on the desktop, send an email, play a sound or show an icon in the system tray.

server monitoring

The free version of NetTools provides access to several network tools like Ping, Lookup or Trace but also more advanced tools like network and host scans.

I personally think it’s a bit unfortunate to mix free and commercial versions into the free version which might confuse the user at the beginning. Networking Monitoring Software Look@Lan offers most of the features as well but is completely free.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/13/server-monitoring-software/feed/ 14 eToolz Network Toolset http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 11:57:09 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4090 It is sometimes required to issue a ping or tracert command to identify the source for a slow Internet connection or no connection to a server at all. I usually use those commands when I notice that websites that I own run slow or are not responsive at all. This can also be useful if you are a gamer and want to test your ping to a game server or find out how your connection is routed to the server. Several companies, like Blizzard for instance, request a tracert and ping before they even look in the matter.

Most operating systems have those tools on board and it is normally not required to use an external tool. Many users however do not like to work with the command line in Windows and prefer a graphical user interface instead. Many also have difficulties issuing the correct commands, e.g. finding out how to save the result in a text document automatically.

eToolz is a collection of network and Internet tools that provides a graphical interface for several common commands. This includes ping and tracert but also DNS and whois lookups, mail checks, the retrieval of http headers, time synchronization, pagerank check and list with useful information (default ports, domain extensions).

etoolz

Most functions come with several options. It is for instance possible to select one of six whois databases, define timeouts, ping counts or the maximum amount of hops of a tracert. Every echo in the program can be copied normally. Five languages are supported: German, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch although a few of the information are still not translated and therefor in German.

The developer of the product uses Google Translate to provide an English version of the homepage, ever heard of Nazi lookups ? Yeah, me neither.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/feed/ 1 Top 100 Network Security Tools http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/22/top-100-network-security-tools/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/22/top-100-network-security-tools/#comments Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:41:38 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/22/top-100-network-security-tools/ Great list of the top 100 network security tools voted by 3243 users of the nmap-hackers mailing list. Every tool mentioned has a description, a homepage link to the developers, icons that tell you if it works on your system and if it costs money. All utilities belong to a category, you have the option to display every category. (like vulnerability scanners)

Top ten tools are Nessus, Wireshark (former Ethereal), Snort, Netcat, Metasploit Framework, Hping2, Kismet, TcpDump, Cain and Abel and finally John the Ripper.

This is a great collection of the most important network security tools of 2006.

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