Network Monitor

What is Network Monitor?

Network monitor is the successor of my 'Network Watcher' program. It also allows you to monitor which computers are connected to your network. But unlike with Network Watcher, it is not necessary to install the software on each individual computer of your network.

The only disadvantage of this software is it doesn't retrieve all the networked computers automatically. Instead you have to enter a list with the computers you would like to monitor manually. Of course you have to do that only once. The list is stored in a single XML data file which can be copied to other computers.

I designed this software to keep track of the computers you are interested in. If you have a very dynamic network with lots of changes, this software is probably not what you are looking for.

Network monitor will show you a list with all the computers you have entered. Each of these computers will be pinged on a regular base. A PING is actually a network packet to check if a remote computer is online. This remote computer should reply the sender. When no reply occurs within 1 second, it probably means the computer is not online.

Optionally you can enable a popup menu for certain computers. When the status of the computer changes, a little popup menu will appear for 5 seconds.

Network Monitor will add an icon to the system tray. This is the location in your Windows taskbar, at the left of the clock area. From here you can start the program by double clicking the icon.

Updates

5 november 2009: Added a logging function so every event is logged to the Windows event logger. This function might require administrative privileges.
4 november 2009: New version added with ping support. A computer can be pinged by right-clicking its name in the list. You can use the ping function to determine if the computer is connected to your LAN or an external network.

Download software

Here you can download the setup wizard for Network Monitor. The application is written in a .NET environment so you need to have the .NET framework before you can run the software. Modern Windows installations already include the .NET framework.

If you want the program to run automatically when Windows start, you should add a shortcut to your Windows start-up folder.

Developped in:	Visual Basic 2008 Express (.NET)
Download type:	Self extracting ZIP
License:	Freeware
Size:	360 kB
Source code:	not available
MD5 Checksum:	4db60d47bc3e1e33fa0cf6cc142d5ece

Usage Terms

This program is provided as it is. You can download and use the program for free, but you may not make any financial profit with it.

Please use this software at your own risk.