Opening netwox toolbox
Jul 21st, 17:21 UTC
Administrators daily face simple network taskes. Some of them requires to install specific softwares, which is time consuming and complex in heterogeneous environments. A cross-platform toolbox providing several tools only requires one installation and lowers incompatibilities. Netwox is one such toolbox.
Opening netwox toolbox
Administrators daily face simple network taskes. Some of them requires to install specific softwares, which is time consuming and complex in heterogeneous environments. A cross-platform toolbox providing several tools only requires one installation and lowers incompatibilities.
Bob works as system administrator in a public school. This morning, he faced three simple problems.
First, he had to transfert a file between two computers without access to a third party server. Then, a network bottleneck occured caused by an overloaded router. Finally, packets apparently stopped crossing his LAN.
To solve those problems, Bob installed a FTP server on one computer, a network performance measurement software along the path of the bottleneck, and finally a sniffer.
So, on some of his computers, there is a FTP server, a measurement program and a sniffer. It's complicated, and depending on challenges he'll face this afternoon, he might install more softwares.
Suppose Bob knew about a network toolbox containing a set of common and simple tools (of course all conceivable network tools cannot be in this toolbox, but it provides the main ones). He would have installed the toolbox once on each computer, and directly have used it during all the day, and all subsequent days.
This story is fiction. The network toolbox is not. It's named netwox.
Netwox contains 150 tools oriented towards network administrators. It also contains some common helpers utilities.
For example, netwox can be used to:
- send an email (tool number 106)
- post a newsgroup message (107)
- download newsgroup messages (109)
- query a DNS server (102)
- download and upload files or directories using FTP (111 to 117)
- host web pages using a simple HTTP server (125)
- download a web page or FTP file (136)
- recursively download files on a web server (137 to 139)
- send syslog messages (97)
- connect on a telnet server using a simple client (99)
- execute one command through telnet (100)
- chat on IRC (152)
- find passwords for FTP, HTTP and telnet protocols (brute force) (130, 131, 132 and 101)
- remotely execute a command using a web browser (126)
- connect on a text based service such as SMTP or FTP (87)
- check if a host (ping ICMP, ARP, ICMPv6NeighDisc) is up (49, 55 and 148)
- check if a service (TCP, UDP) is up (51 and 53)
- resolve IP and Ethernet address of a computer (3)
- check presence of hosts or services (scan ICMP, TCP, UDP, ARP, ICMPv6NeighDisc) (65 to 72 and 150)
- obtain list of path routers (traceroute ICMP, TCP, UDP) (57, 59 and 61)
- display simple network statistics (10)
- ping a host and emit a beep when reached. It is useful when pluging network cables away from screen (49)
- obtain all Ethernet addresses of a network, to check if computers have changed (5)
- measure network performance (155 to 158)
- sniff to analyze low level protocols and spot a problem (7)
- resend sniffed packets to reproduce a problem (14)
- send various kind of packets (32 to 41 and 140 to 147)
- dump contents of a file (26)
- compute MD5 checksum of a file (27)
- edit a binary file (28 and 29)
- convert newlines in a file between Unix and Dos formats (30 and 31)
- split a file in several chunks (128 and 129)
- display ASCII table (23)
- compute hexadecimal or binary value of and integer (21)
- obtain base64, hexa or md5 value of a string (22)
- etc.
This GPL program runs on Linux, BSD, Solaris, HP-UX and Windows.
Netwox comes with netwag, a graphical front-end.
More information :
(Submitted by Laurent Constantin of Independant)
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