Internet Maniac Help

Startup Screen

The startup screen shows your computer's name, IP address and your assigned hostname. The assigned hostname remains Unknown if your computer does not have an entry in the DNS server. It's nothing to panic about!

Host Lookup

This window is used for resolving hostnames to their IP addresses and vice versa. You must be connected to the Internet in order for this to work. The DNS server specified in the network settings is used for performing these operations.

In the newer versions of Internet Maniac (1.04 and above), Host Lookup returns the complete list of IP addresses corresponding to a hostname. It also shows aliases if there are any for the host.

Ping

Ping is used for checking if a machine on the net is alive. It shows the time it takes to send and receive a few bytes of data. You can set the number of times you want the host pinged. The average ping time is shown at the end.

Note : You must have ICMP.DLL on your system to use this function.

Traceroute

This utility is used for tracing the path data takes to reach it's destination. It shows the names and IP addresses of the routers on the path along with their ping times. Traceroute can be used for finding out where slowdown occurs (detecting bottlenecks on a network).

Note : You must have ICMP.DLL on your system to use this function.

Connect

This utility allows you to establish a TCP connection with another computer over the Internet. Once you are connected, you can send and receive data as plain text. As a simple test, you can connect to port 110 of your mail server and then send the following data :

USER _your username_
PASS _your password_
QUIT

Now you know how the POP3 works!!!

Time

Retrieves time from the specified server. The server must be running a time daemon on port 37. An example of such a server is clock.llnl.gov. To synchronize your computer's clock with the time server, check the "Synchronize local clock" box.

Note: The clock in your system tray shows the time adjustment (if any) only after you close the Maniac Time window.

Finger

Finger is a unix utility that tells when and where a person logged in from. You cannot finger a windows machine unless they are running a finger daemon. To finger a person, type his/her email address in the text box and click on finger. To get a list of all the people logged into a unix system, simply type the hostname in the text box and click on Finger.

Whois

Whois retrieves information on the specified domain name from Internic's database. The domain name must not have www in it. It must be the top level domain identifying the organization. Example : use cnn.com and not www.cnn.com. Use usf.edu and not www.usf.edu or eng.usf.edu etc.

POP3

This utility allows you to see if you have messages in your email account without having to log in or running your mail program. Enter the information as described below and then click on Check Mail.

Type in your server name. This is usually the stuff after the '@' sign in your email address. For example, if your email address is bob@hello.com, then your server is hello.com and your user name is bob. The password field is starred out for security reasons and is not saved anywhere.

If an error occurs, an explanation shows up in the status bar. If it does not, send me email!!!

Listener

Listens for incoming UDP packets or TCP connections on the specified port. If TCP is selected, the connection is closed as soon as the incoming connection is detected. In other words, the connection is terminated by listener before any data can be sent or received. This utility will only show you who tried to connect to your computer. It does not show any data they send.

Scanner

The fun part of this program! This utility allows you to scan the ports of either a single computer or an entire domain.

To scan a single computer, type in the target computer's IP address or hostname. Make sure the 'host' button is checked and type in the port range. Typically, you would set it to 1 to 1024 since these are the ones that are reserved for standard services. However, you may want to narrow the range since scanning each port takes time.

To scan an entire domain, check the domain button. Then enter the target domain's IP address in the nnn.nnn.nnn.* format (example 24.92.11.*). This causes the scanner to scan the selected port of all the computers whose IP addresses begin with 24.92.11. In this mode, you cannot set a range of ports to scan. Instead, you specify a single port (example 80 for web servers).

Speed Check

This utility can be used for checking the throughput between two computers. You can either check the connection speed between your computer and a server running the chargen service (on port 19) or your computer and another computer running Internet Maniac version 1.12 or higher.

Winsock

An easy way of looking up what version of winsock you are running on your system along with vendor info, maximum number of sockets (connections) and max UDP size that your winsock stack can handle.

Note : The Vendor Info may appear garbled on some systems. (Removed since version 1.04)

Network Adapter Address

Clicking on this option gives you your Network Interface Card's (NIC) hardware address. No two NICs share the same address (anywhere in the world). It is factory set!