Introduce Four Free Network Tools to Network Administrators

Today, Let me introduce four FREE network tools to all network administrators, the tools from Colasoft are totally free and are widely used, don't miss them out, guys.

Colasoft MAC Scanner
Colasoft MAC Scanner is a scan tool used for scanning IP addresses and MAC addresses in a local network, which display scan results in a list, including IP address, MAC address, Host Name and Manufacture. It will group all IP addresses according to MAC address if a MAC address is configured with multiple IP addresses. The scanned results can be exported into .txt file for future reference.

Colasoft Ping Tool
Colasoft Ping Tool is powerful in supporting to ping multiple IP addresses simultaneously and comparing response time in a graphic chart. Users can view historical charts and save the charts to a *.bmp file. With this build-in tool, users are able to ping the IP addresses of captured packets in a protocol analyzer (e.g. Colasoft Network Analyzer) conveniently, including resource IP, destination IP or both.

Colasoft Packet Builder
Colasoft Packet Builder enables creating custom network packets; users can use this tool to check their network protection against attacks and intruders.Colasoft Packet Builder includes a very powerful editing feature. Besides common HEX editing raw data, it features a Decoding Editor allowing users to edit specific protocol field values much easier.

Users are also able to edit decoding information in two editors - Decode Editor and Hex Editor. Users can select one from the provided templates Ethernet Packet, ARP Packet, IP Packet, TCP Packet and UDP Packet, and change the parameters in the decoder editor, hexadecimal editor or ASCII editor to create a packet. Any changes will be immediately displayed in the other two windows. In addition to building packets, Colasoft Packet Builder also supports saving packets to packet files and sending packets to network.

Colasoft Packet Player
Colasoft Packet Player is a packet replayer which allows users to open captured packet trace files and play them back in the network. It supports many packet trace file formats created by sniffer softwares such as Colasoft Network Analyzer, Ethereal, Network General Sniffer and WildPackets EtherPeek/OmniPeek, etc.

Except sending packet files in original interval between loops, Colasoft Packet Player also supports sending packet files in burst mode and defining the delay between loops if the loop count is more than one.

5 Things Our IT Department had to skip

In last blog, we have talked about the 5 items our IT department must do even in the big recession, in addition to the things we can't do without, there are many more things we had to skip. We are not exactly happy to stop doing these things but desperate times cry for desperate measures and since these activities are something we can do without we had to either quit them, or drastically reduce them:

• No purchases of new hardware. Though it is not precise to say that we haven't bought a single piece of hardware in the last year, we have definitely cut hardware spendings. For the time being we do not plan to make major hardware purchases.

• Capital expenditures. Capital expenditures are another budget item we had to drastically shrink. We had schedules projects but the current economic situation made us have second thoughts and now capital expenditures are on hold.

• Software that is nice to have but we can do without it. Similarly to hardware and capital expenditures, some major software expenses had to be cut. Yes, there are many products, for instance accounting, HR, or ERP modules, which are great to have but we'll go for them when the economic outlook is less gloomy.

• Standardization. You know that IT people generally hate when they have to deal with bureaucracy and standardization, so if there is an item, we are happy to skip, this is standardization. More or less we skipped all standardization-related activities except those, that are related to regulations compliance. Standardization is put on hold, especially if it requires investment or other resources.

• No infrastructure upgrades. We are not exactly happy about this one but since there are more important items we can't skip, we had to significantly reduce the planned network upgrades. Some of the projects in this area are put on hold, while others are canceled.

It wasn't easy to decide what to skip and what to keep but when times are tough, it is not possible to pretend that everything is OK and go on as planned. We hope that we are right in our choices and time will show if we did wise choices or not.

James Ackland is Author of this article from www.Colasoft.com.

About Colasoft Co., Ltd.
Ever since 2001, Colasoft has been dedicated in providing all-in-one and easy-to-use network sniffer software for network administrators and IT managers to monitor network activities, analyze network performance, enhance network security, and troubleshoot network problems. Up to now, more than 5000 customers in over 70 countries trust the flagship product – Colasoft Network Sniffer as their network monitoring and troubleshooting solution. Colasoft also offers four free network utilities: Colasoft Packet Builder, Colasoft Packet Player, Colasoft MAC Scanner, and Colasoft Ping Tool. Learn more about Colasoft and its solutions, please visit http://www.colasoft.com/.