The network is a backbone of a company. If a network connection of an important node has malfunctioned, the organization will come to standstill. Employees will not be able to access the servers. Furthermore, visitors or customers will not be able to access the web application deployed on a server.
To make sure that the web applications are delivering a great experience to the customers or visitors, you should monitor the network infrastructure periodically.
There are plenty of free network tools available on the web. Netcrunch is one of the most popular applications among the lot. Adreamsoft, the developer of Netcrunch has recently launched the latest version of Netcrunch. Below is my review of Netcrunch (Version 2.0).
Netcrunch: Free network tools for Windows OS
Netcrunch requires 133 megabytes storage memory. The program has a striking interface with a gray background and white color text. The main interface of Netcrunch software boasts a sidebar, panel, and a menu.
The sidebar flaunts a list of utilities and a search box. The program opens the utility you select from the sidebar in the panel.
NetCrunch provides the following tools:
Ping: If you want to check the latency of a network or time taken by a byte to reach your workstation from a remote computer, use this tool.
Netcrunch sends 32 bytes of data to a remote machine every second. It provides a button to stop/start pinging an IP address. Once you stop the tool, you’ll see a beautiful chart that depicts the average ping time.
Traceroute: With this tool, you can check the route a byte has taken to reach the destination machine.
Wake on Lan: Netcrunch allows you to wake a computer connected to the same network through this interface.
DNS checker: This tool allows you to get details of the nameservers of a website. You can also see the SOA records of a website with it.
WhoIS checker: Want to know the address and phone number of the website owner? Use the WhoIS tool of Netcrunch. Along with the details of the website owner, the program also makes you aware of the domain registrar, registration date, expiry date, etc.
DNS Audit: A web application may not be functioning because of various reasons. If the application’s configuration is correct and if it’s not reporting errors, you must check the DNS settings.
NetCrunch provides a DNS Audit tool which accepts two IP address as an input. It scans the IP Addresses within the user-defined range to detect DNS errors. To find errors, it performs reverse DNS lookup operations.
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MAC Resolver: If you’re using the Netcrunch program, you don’t have to visit every workstation and fire the IPconfig command to get its MAC address.
The software comes with a MAC resolver utility through which you can get MAC address of each computer connected to the same network.
Subnet Calculator: To calculate subnet with the Netcrunch software, you must provide the following information:
- IP Address, mask, network bits.
- Host bits, the number of subnets, hosts per submit.
Ping Scanner: This utility of Netcrunch software enables you to monitor a range of IP address at a time. It will make you aware of the IP addresses that are currently in use.
Network Service Scanner: Netcrunch allows you to find up to 70 networking services running on a computer connected to LAN.
TCP Port scanner: User this tool to check what TCP ports are open on a computer.
Conclusion: NetCrunch is a useful software for website developers, network admins, and other networking professionals. It has 12 important tools. Visit Adremsoft to download the free Netcrunch software on your Windows PC.
