You probably know of the Windows command line tool netstats, which allows you to list all open TCP/IP ports. You can use it for troubleshooting or if you have the suspicion that a hacker or malware is trying to connect to the Internet. CurrPorts is for the same purpose, but it is a GUI tool, much more powerful than netstats, and more convenient to operate.

CurrPorts displays the following parameters for each connection: process name, process ID, protocol, local port, local port name, local address, remote address, remote port, remote host name, state (established, time wait, listening), process path (local file name), product name, file description (name of the program), file version, company, process created on, user name, process services, process attributes, and the time when the connection was added. It is also able to display the country name of the remote IP. For this, you have to download the country database file from here and copy it to the CurrPorts folder.

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NetLimiter Monitor is a simple tool that allows you to monitor applications that have open Internet connections. I tested version 2.0.10. The Explorer-like interface shows all applications together with their processes. The transfer rates are displayed for each application’s process, separately.

This can be useful if a program launches other apps. In such cases, you often don’t really know which application actually connects to the Internet. A typical example is the notorious svchost.exe. NetLimiter Monitor displays the PID of each process which you can use to track down the real culprit with   Process Explorer or Process Monitor.

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AdapterWatch is a standalone tool that can help troubleshoot network problems. It displays all the information you can think of about network adapters.

There are four tabs: Network Adapters, TCP/UDP Statistics, IP Statistics, ICMP Statistics and General. I tested AdapterWatch v1.04.

The Network Adapters’ tab mostly displays configuration settings such as: the GUID, MAC address, DHCP lease, interface speed or MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit). You will also find some statistical information including: received/sent data, calculated speed and discarded packets. The list is quite comprehensive. Please check out the screenshot for other parameters. What I like about AdapterWatch is that it displays all network adapters in a table. This makes it easy to compare all settings. That’s not possible with the network settings tools in Windows because you can’t open the controls of different network adapters, simultaneously.

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3d Traceroute does what its name implies. It displays traceroute responses in a three dimensional representation: X-axis represents the hops (routers); the y-axis, the response time of the routers; and the z-axis stands for successive probes in time.

While this seems to be just some kind of gimmick, it might turn out to be useful, if you have to track down certain kinds of network problems. For example, if you experience erratic network transfer delays, you can find out easily where the bottleneck is. All you have to do is to probe your destination for some time. The router that causes the delays will stand out in the graphic representation sooner or later.

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Submitted by Josh Stephens - Blog: Geek Speak

Download SolarWinds FREE Real-time NetFlow Analyzer to Get Deep Visibility into Network Traffic & Slowdowns!

Our new free tool unlocks the power of NetFlow on your network: SolarWinds Real-time NetFlow Analyzer! This free desktop tool captures and analyzes NetFlow data in real time to show you exactly what types of traffic are on your network, where that traffic is coming from, and where it is going. With Real-time NetFlow Analyzer, you can take the guesswork out of diagnosing traffic spikes and troubleshooting bandwidth issues.

If you are new to NetFlow, you’re going to love this powerful protocol. If you haven’t already, it is easy to turn on flows on your existing Cisco routers. We even have a free tool – NetFlow Configurator – to help you remotely configure NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco® devices. We’ve bundled this tool with the Real-time NetFlow Analyzer download, so that you can get started with monitoring network traffic immediately.

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• Early Access Program for PacketTrap PerspectiveMSP. http://is.gd/1wgQ It is a new multi-site network management platform. I reviewed pt360, their network engineer’s tool suite, before. http://is.gd/1whe
• Apple now worth more than Google http://is.gd/1wk2 Hard to believe. Microsoft is still number one followed by IBM, Apple, and Google.
• Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides updated http://is.gd/1w8K
• 218,000 Servers in Microsoft Data Centers? http://is.gd/1w72 Are they all running Windows Server? Imagine the license costs
• Microsoft opens two way discussion about Windows 7 in a new blog. It’s your chance to influence the development of Win7. http://is.gd/1soH
• Hyper-V: Creating highly available virtual machines http://is.gd/1vWB Nice step-by-step guide about Hyper-V and Failover Cluster.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 http://is.gd/1vVB

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SSH is not really popular in the Windows world. Nevertheless it is a very useful protocol to manage Windows servers remotely. All you have to do is install OpenSSH for Windows on your server. This allows you to remotely connect to a command line interface through a secure connection.

You know me, I am not a CLI fan, but if I have to manage a server using my Windows Mobile toy it is often the easiest way. The small screen of a Pocket PC is big enough for simple commands. It is no secret that most problems under Windows can be solved with a reboot. If you have a problematic server, it can be quite comforting to know that you can restart the server wherever you are.

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The Windows Mobile IP Utility from Enterprise Mobile runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. For Windows Mobile 5.0 you have to install the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 first. The tool allows you to troubleshoot network connections with your Pocket PC or Smartphone. This can be useful if you have problems with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

The tool shows the IP configuration of your device, supports ping, trace route, ping sweep, and allows you to test the speed the of your Internet connection. Unfortunately, the speed test didn’t work when I tried the utility. It launched the Internet Explorer which tried to open a web page at Enterprise Mobile, but the site only produced a runtime error. Perhaps this is only a temporary problem.

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eToolz is a nifty GUI tool that allows you to perform a number of network queries: DNS, ping, traceroute, WHOIS, mail-check, HTTP-header, time (NTP), Google pagerank, top level domains and port numbers.

For some of these queries, you would usually go to the command prompt in Windows; for example, the DNS query would be just nslookup. eToolz allows you to query for A, PTR, NS, MX, and SOA records. The Ping tool offers the options pause, bytes, timeout and count, and traceroute lets you configure the number of hops and the timeout. Even though eToolz is a standalone program (it doesn’t have to be installed), it will store the IP addresses, host names, etc. that you enter, so the next time you want to ping a certain host, you can just select it from a drop-down-list. I think, in most cases, you will be faster with eToolz than with the command prompt tools because it can save you some typing exercises.

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• PacketTrap pt360 pro now supports Cisco NetFlow. This feature helps optimize networks for peak performance.
• Remote Desktop Connection 6.1 brings better support for Windows Server 2008: http://support.microsoft.co…
• Microsoft Network Monitor 3.2 Beta is available at Microsoft Connect. Description of the new features: http://snurl.com/2jahr
• Abbreviation for Microsoft Application Virtualization alas Softgrid is now App-V http://snurl.com/2jafr
• Comprehensive guide to Server Core. Recommended!  #
• I added MojoPac and Application Jukebox to my list of application virtualization solutions. http://snurl.com/2gdwi #
• VMM 2008 supports Hyper-V RC1 now. You can download it at Microsoft Connect. #
• VMware renamed Thinstall to ThinApp and released version 4.0. http://snurl.com/2ge5c #