Network+Tools

Since Network Monitoring seems to interest a lot of us I thought to share this info/tool especially when Vint Cerf is "onboard"...

"Google and partners unveil a set of Internet performance measurement tools. http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/274715/google_partners_release_net_neutrality_tools?pp=2 "

http://measurementlab.net/ Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.

-- Jaime Gago French American International School Technology Coordinator -- http://www.frenchamericansf.org

 From: pzingg@kentfieldschools.org Date: January 30, 2009 10:29:56 AM PST

I use SNM - http://snm.sourceforge.net/ - instead of MRTG - to monitor network traffic. It has a nice interface and is *relatively* easy to configure. Written in perl.

I also use Nagios.

I have been tempted to look at:

Munin - http://munin.projects.linpro.no/ - written in Perl

And these monitors which mostly check filesystems, processes, etc:

Monit - http://mmonit.com/monit/

God - http://god.rubyforge.org/ - written in Ruby, a language I am doing a lot of work in

From: cmoredock@bentleyschool.net Date: January 30, 2009 10:08:46 AM PST

Love Nagios (netsaint of old). We use it to monitor just about everything, from printer supply issues, to process monitoring, to the more typical host and service monitoring. I have loved the architecture of the application and have found the ability to craft my our service checks with simple return codes simply great! I put this up there with Toby's RRDTOOL for great flexibility and openness.

-Cam

From: jmergy@lwhs.org Date: January 29, 2009 2:17:33 PM PST

KisMac (not sure if it is still around with German gov issues) http://trac.kismac-ng.org/ ZenMap (NMAP with X11 GUI) http://nmap.org/zenmap/ Zabbix (monitoring system like Nagios) - but will probably revert to Nagios (my old friend).

Jonathan ................................ Jonathan Mergy (jmergy@lwhs.org) Director Of Technology Lick-Wilmerding High School 755 Ocean Ave, SF CA 94112 P:415.333.4021 x365 [|http://www.lwhs.org]


 * From:** Jaime Gago 
 * Date:** Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:58:09 -0800

iStumbler for wireless networks, FOSS for Mac OS X only.

http://www.istumbler.net/

Jaime

Since Cameron and Jonathan gave us really nice tours of Wireshark and IPCop, it occurred to me that a list of all the other network administration tools which people commonly rely on might be useful. Many of us are responsible for our internal networks, even if most of us are, like me, not "real" network admins. But having a good toolkit is pretty important in any case.

In the spirit of yesterday's meeting, I will stick to Open Source since that's what we use:


 * nmap - for port scanning, OS fingerprinting, many other uses
 * Nessus - for security analysis (attack your own server -- best way to check for holes in your security profile)
 * Nagios - for server/network monitoring (amazingly useful, used to be NetSaint)

along with the requisite built-ins ping, traceroute, dig, whois, etc.

and I know there are tons of free (open source or not) Windows apps out there, and a bunch of web apps that will probe your firewall (grc.com), run virus scans, check your mail/dns configs, etc.

--John Berliner