Freaks Macintosh Archive/Freaks Macintosh Archive.bin/Freaks Macintosh Archives/HackAddict™ Magazine/HackAddict 06/Files/IPNetMonitor/IPNetMonitor.PPC/IPNetMonitor.PPC.rsrc/TEXT_132_Monitor Help.txt

Text File | 1997-10-13 | 3KB | 16 lines

Monitor

The Monitor window allows you to see the characters per second throughput of your Internet connection in real time.  Green bars along the bottom show receive data and red bars above them indicate transmit.  A blue line shows a 30 second running average.

The graph shifts left each second to show the last minute of transmit and receive data.  Any interruption in the reported data is indicated by a bar of alternating green and red stripes the full height of the graph.

You can reduce the size of the Monitor display by clicking in the zoom box to toggle between the full size display and a small display that uses less screen space.  The small display is designed to be left on all the time.  If you quit IPNetMonitor with the small Monitor window visible, Monitoring will automatically restart the next time you launch the application.  Notice you can cover all but the right most edge of the small Monitor window and still see the graphic display and average throughput.

The number of characters per second are counted at “interrupt time”, so are largely unaffected by other applications on your system.  The graph however is updated at application or “SystemTask” time, so may appear to stall if another application holds the processor for an extended period.  When the application yields, any previously collected data for up to 15 seconds will be displayed.  If the Monitor window is not allowed to update for more than 15 seconds, additional data will be discarded and an alternating green and red bar will appear to indicate a disruption.  The average bytes per second will also be reset to include only the new data.

The Monitor actually collects data by inserting a proxy module immediately above the Data Link provider layer.  If no Streams are open to your data link provider, the button may read “Pending” to indicate there is nothing to monitor.  The display will start again when the data link layer is opened.

For monitoring to work, the proxy module must be inserted before the first network connection is opened.  The proxy module is called “OTModl$Proxy” and must be placed in your Extensions Folder.  You can insert the module by opening the Monitor window before starting any other network applications, or placing a copy of the supplied “SetupAP” application in your Startup Items folder.  SetupAP simply tells Open Transport to "autopush" the STREAMS module "OTModl$Proxy" above any PPP device it finds and then quits.

For Monitoring other data link providers (such as Ethernet), you will be prompted to confirm whether you wish to modify your TCP/IP configuration.  This technique may change in future versions.