Introduction

netKerplunk is a tool for monitoring the state of a network by regularly pinging the machines within it.

It was born out of the need to monitor my School’s network for failures without having to spend a huge amount of money on a network management tool.

It achieves this task on the premise that you understand the network topology of your site. For example, if machines A and B are no longer responding, then you know that there could be an issue with the path between them and the machine running netKerplunk. If all the machines in a certain location are no longer responding and others in an adjacent area are, then you can be directed to the Switch that connects up that area; hopefully before the Teacher has had a chance to reach the phone.

The Main Screen:

What netKerplunk can and cannot do.

It will:

• Allow you to monitor and log the state over time of anything that is ‘pingable’; allowing you to manage your network with greater efficiency.
• Allow multiple instances at the same time, allowing each instance to be efficient at monitoring a particular area that you define.
• Log when a particular pingable entry changes state from being ‘on’ and ‘off’ and vice versa.
• Allow you to save and reopen lists of entries in a human readable text file, called an ‘ipl’ file.

It will not:

• Display your network graphically.
• Discover your network for you.
• E-Mail you an alert when something happens.
• Monitor anything that is not pingable by the ‘ping’ command; see Wikipedia.

For more information, please read the ‘Mini Manual’ from the menu.

Purchase

netKerplunk is ‘donationware‘, I ask for £10 per copy. Please donate on PayPal using this button…

Installation

1. Download the Java™ JRE from ‘Oracle‘.
2. Download ‘netKerplunk.jar’.
3. Double click on ‘netKerplunk.jar’.

If you have any comments / enhancements you would like, please contact