Net/Systems Management /

It's a plot I tell you!

By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 06/25/01

We're deferring the review of tools for creating images using Scalable Vector Graphics for two weeks. This week we take a second look at a tool we thought was terrific in June 1999.

In our estimation, Pingplotter from Nessoft has risen in Version 2.3 from terrific to great and possibly indispensable!

Pingplotter is an implementation of traceroute and displays a graph of the ping time for each hop from your computer to another computer.

With this version, Pingplotter's interface has been polished and has a new window.

The interface sports a list of URLs or IP addresses that can be used to select the target machine and controls for selecting how many times the route to that machine should be traced. You can also specify the interval between traces (from 1 second to one hour) and the number of samples to use to calculate the average round-trip time.

When tracing starts the display lists all steps - by name where possible - on the route to the target, and graphs the minimum, maximum, current and average ping time for each step. Below that graph, another graph shows the average ping time to the target displayed in a horizontal, scrolling ticker for only 1 minute or as long as 48 hours. You can also right-click on any step in the list and add another ping ticker display for that computer.

The new window we mentioned logs when the routing to the target changes. This is interesting because, if you use Pingplotter to monitor your network, it will show you when your routers are misbehaving.

Pingplotter can be set up to alert you when certain thresholds are exceeded for whatever period you like. For example, you might have Pingplotter send you an e-mail if 20 pings out of 100 exceed 500 msec; log all events when 10 out of 10 pings exceed 750 msec, and; play a sound whenever a ping takes more than 1 second. E-mail alerts can also be configured to have the trace data attached.

A new feature enables you to automatically save sample data and images of graphs. Sample data can be exported to a text file and can be saved in "native" format and reloaded. By clicking within the graphs of reloaded data, you can display the ping times for each step at a specific time.

A new autosave feature supports scheduled saving of the screen image in a variety of formats, which is useful as part of a network management display on a Web server.

Other new options include ways to send custom packets, change display features, and the ability to select any machine in the list of steps and have its Whois or ARIN entry displayed.

We suggest you download Pingplotter and try it out. And if you buy it, you will only be out $15.

Gearhead awards Pingplotter 10 gear teeth out of 10 and a commendation.