Pinger  Version 2.3  http://www.digitaldaze.com/estrella/index.html for the program's home page Note that a mailing list can be joined from the WWW site to be informed of updates. Changes to this document since last release are in RED.
Index -

• Read First.
• Overview.
• New Features. 
• Key Features.
• Requirements.
• How to install the program.
• How to run the program.
• How to configure the program.
• Notes.
• History.
• Product Direction.
• Freeware, shareware, costware - IMPORTANT
• Bugs.
• Last word.

Read First - 

If you obtained the program from the http://www.ibt.com/~estrella/Program/index.html web page, note that the program now is being supported through a separate web page at http://www.digitaldaze.com/estrella/index.html or through www.eaglenet.com/pinger/index.html.. The www.ibt.com pages will be disabled shortly so please use the new pages.

Overview -

The pinger program is designed to ping a user provided list of systems and warn you if a system goes down. The system has been designed to be easy to use and perform with the minimal of requirements. I personally use it to monitor over 200 addresses (routers, router interfaces, hubs, servers, etc) from my regular NT workstation system with no impact on its performance.

Information about the latest version of the program is available at http://www.digitaldaze.com/estrella/index.html and from http://www.eaglenet.com/pinger/index.html.

New Features in this version - 

• Fix bug that would not update the last down system in the Down pane once the system would return to normal. This has been a recurring bug since version 2.1
• Ability to save ping responses to user selected file. BETA FEATURE NOT WELL TESTED
• New ping option available through right click menu.
• Users are able to select file names through standard windows filename box.
• Detail window position and size are maintained between sessions.
• Improved split bar option
• Cosmetic changes to the system configuration screen.
• Fixed periodic runtime error with code 103 or 104.
• Cosmetic fix to History label being overlapped by split bar.

Key Features - 

• Able to automatically maintain HTML pages showing systems that are currently down and also the history of systems that came down and back up. 
• Ability to have different polling delays for groups of systems. 
• Ability to include additional information when defining systems such as location and system type (router, hub, etc). 
• Ability to monitor host response times.
• Ability to save ping response times to user selected file.
• Ability to save outages into a user selected file. 
• Ability to execute a BAT file each time a system goes down. 
• Ability to play a WAV file when a system goes down. 
• TraceRoute and ping utility fully integrated. 
• Fully threaded application for quicker response. 
• System designed to run in background at all times. 

Requirements - 

• Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0. When performing tests with the program running on Windows 95 and NT, the NT version is much more effective due to its better architecture and control of threads.  Tests show on similar systems, pinger utilizing 100 % on windows 95 while barely using up 3 % on an NT box!  If you will run this in production, recommended you use NT with over 20 megs of memory.
• Microsoft TCP/IP stack. 

How to install the program - 

• Unzip the files into a directory. 
• Run the setup to install the program. 
• To uninstall, execute the uninstall routine through the normal windows Program Add/Remove option. 

How to run the program - 

• Execute the pinger from the start menu. 
• We recommend that you place this file in the startup folder so that it start automatically. 
• To see the detail screen showing the status of the systems being monitored, double click on the icon for the program at the icon tray area (usually lower right corner - next to clock). 
• During program execution, if an error occur, the error screen will pop-up so you can see it. 
• You can enable an option to have the display screen pop-up if changes occur (a system goes down or a downed system returns to normal). 
• As a system fail and then come back up, they will be placed on the History pane of the detail screen. If you need to clear this screen, just right click on it and select the clear screen option. 
• You have many options by selecting a system in either the down or history pane and then clicking the right mouse button.  These include -
• Traceroute - A window will come up and show the trace to that system. Note that you can configure if you want a traceroute to resolve the name of systems or not (See General Configuration screen).
• Ping - You have the ability to ping to a system and see the response time from it.  This is useful to check systems that are running slow. 
• Detail - This screen shows a detail of the system in question.  It includes information like last time there was an error, how many checks have been done to the system, last response time of the system, etc.
• Telnet - You can invoke the telnet program of your choice so that you can easily connect to the given system.
• Some of the options noted above can also be used without selecting a system.  In this case, pinger will ask you what system you are referring to.  This is useful when doing traceroutes to systems not defined to pinger. To check this, on the Down or History pane, just right click on an area of the screen outside of any entry.  Select the option (ping, traceroute, etc). Another screen will pop up and ask for the system name or IP address.
• On the History pane, you have an additional option when right clicking - Clear window.  This allow you to delete all of the systems in the history window. If you do this and you are using the HTML option, then the HTML history page will show all empty.
• On the Down pane, you also have an additional option when right clicking - See All Systems.  Selecting this option will allow you to see on this pane all of the systems being monitored by pinger.  This is useful if you want to check how they are being polled (double click on the system).  To just see the systems with problems, right click again on this pane and select the same entry again.
• A useful feature on the Down and History pane is that by clicking on any column header (Ex. problem, Location, etc.) the window is sorted in ascending order in that field.  Click a second time so that the sort is in descending order. 

How to configure the program - 

• To get to the configuration screen, place cursor under the icon for the program on the Icon Tray area (usually lower right corner - next to clock). Right click to see the options menu. 
• Select configure option, and a sub menu will show additional options. 
• Key screens to note are: 
• Systems -Allows you to define the systems to be monitored. When selected a new window will come up and show the name of the system, its location and type (first time is empty as no systems have been defined). Click on ADD to add a new system. Another screen comes up that allows you define the information about the system. Key field is the active field, which if checked off means the system remains in the DB but will not be monitored. Also, note that the system name can be anything and can contain spaces (ex "Router for Accountants"). The address field must contain the numeric ip address or DNS name of the system to be monitored. Remember to also select how often to monitor the system. Some fields are defined for future use such as the polling type and Comm. Name. Also note that if you want to monitor if a system is responding slow, you have the option to put in the number of milliseconds the system should respond to. Pinger will average all responses, and if it is higher than the number provided, and error will occur.  You also have the option of saving the ping responses to a file (format is date, average response, shortest response, longest response, packets sent, packets received). When modifying a system, you can just double click from the list or select the modify button after highlighting the system to be changed.
• Polling: Options to determine how often to check systems. Increase the Checks done before notifying down and Seconds to wait for response if you get too many false alarms.  The checks done before notifying as down option is used also to calculate the response time of the system.  So if this option is set to 10, pinger will send 10 packets and average its response time to determine if the system is running slow.
• Logging: Enable this option to save the record of systems going down. Note that a record is comma delimited and will only get written after the system comes back up. The system will log an entry in the log file at the beginning and the end of the pinger program.  Also, logging will occur for both slow responses or unavailable.   The format of the logged file is Problem description,System,address,location and type.
• Notification: Options for dealing with notifying operator when error occur. Note that if you select the option to Continue to beep until acknowledged once an error occurs the system will beep every 5 seconds. To acknowledge it, a new button will appear on the Details screen (lower left corner). If you select the option to execute a BAT file when an error occur, you should note that the system doesn't check to see if the file is executed successfully. Also, the BAT file is called with the system being down as the only option. (See demo.bat as an example of how to utilize this). You also have the ability to play a WAV file when a system goes down. The format of the calling parameters is %1=Name, %2=Address,%3=Problem Type,%4=Location and %5=Type.  Also, note that for all of the passed values, each space is replaced by a _ character.
• HTML: Enable the creation of HTML files automatically. With this option you can have the system automatically create HTML files, and place them on a directory where the WWW server can serve them (ex. Do a net use to the file system where the server is at). Options Unavailable and History filename are the file names of the HTML files to be created by the program. The header and footer filename are file names for a header and footer HTML file that allows you to customize the presentation of the files with backgrounds, Company logos, etc. See files header.htm and footer.htm for examples. 
• General - This screen allows you configure if you want to resolve names when performing traceroutes.  It also allows you to select which telnet client you could use to directly telnet to a device from the software.

Notes - 

• If the system fails to work, ensure that TCP/IP is working OK by using the DOS ping command. 
• Every time you exit the configuration screen, those options are loaded into the program and saved on the registry. 

History - 

• Version 2.3 released on March 2, 1997.
• Fix bug that would not update the last down system in the Down pane once the system would return to normal. This has been a recurring bug since version 2.1
• Ability to save ping responses to user selected file. BETA FEATURE NOT WELL TESTED
• New ping option available through right click menu.
• Users are able to select file names through standard windows filename box.
• Detail window position and size are maintained between sessions.
• Improved split bar option
• Cosmetic changes to the system configuration screen.
• Fixed periodic runtime error with code 103 or 104.
• Cosmetic fix to History label being overlapped by split bar.
• Version 2.2 released on February 22, 1997.
• Fix bug that would not update the last down system in the Down pane once the system would return to normal.
• Added a confirm dialog box before exiting.
• Added 5 and 15 second polling options.
• New format for logged entries (Problem description,System,address,location and type)
• New format for BAT executable( %1=Name, %2=Address,%3=Problem Type,%4=Location and %5=Type).
• When calling BAT executable, for all values passed each space is converted to an _ character.
• Ability to start telnet session from the system.  Select a system on the Down or History pane, and right click. There is a new option under General configuration screen to select your telnet client (defaults to telnet.exe).
• Double click on system in the Down or History pane to see a detail screen of its status including some history information. 
• Splitter bar between History and Down pane allows for dinamic sizing of windows.
• When configuring systems, double clicking on system will open modify window.
• Ability to see all systems in the Down pane by right-clicking and selecting 'See All Systems'. (Use same key combination again to just see problem systems).
• Version 2.1 released on February 21, 1997. 
• Ability to check if systems are responding too slow or not.
• Include a "start of logging" and "end of logging" on log file when the system starts and ends.
• Upgraded log format to note differences between event: slow response vs unavailable.
• Include BAT file demo with the distribution.
• Include HTML files demo with the distribution.
• If HTML option enabled, upon start up fresh HTML pages are created.
• Fix bug which didn't properly allow for the updating of fields location and type in detail window.
• Fix bug which wasn't updating the DOWN html file.
• Version 2.0 released on January 31, 1997. 
• Option to allow use of DNS lookup when doing traceroute. 
• Ability to have different polling delays for groups of systems. 
• Ability to include additional information when defining systems such as location and system type (router, hub, etc). 
• Ability to sort on a field by clicking on the panel's header. 
• New layout for configuration menus. 
• Limit of only 200 systems eliminated. Limited only by hardware system. 
• Increased the allowed values for retries before noting a system down (Polling screen) 
• Fixed bug that executed BAT file regardless of options to execute or not. 
• Version 1.4 released on November 22, 1996. 
• Changes to the current documentation appear in red. 
• Traceroute utility. 
• Play WAV file if a system goes down. 
• Ability to clear the history screen. 
• Fixed bug that allowed polling to be set at zero tries. 
• Version 1.3 released on October 14, 1996. 
• Support for HTML. 
• Support for saving records to a file. 
• Ability to execute a BAT file when a system fails 
• Continuous notification until acknowledge by operator. 
• Improved read-me file. 
• Version 1.2 released on October 1, 1996. 
• Ensures only one copy of program runs. 
• Improved polling logic to reduce false alarms. 
• Configuration changes take effect in session. 
• Version 1.1 released on September 25, 1996. 
• Fixes a problem in which some errors like host unreachable are not properly detected. 
• Version 1.0 Released on September 21, 1996 

Product Direction - 

NOTE: Timeframes will depend on current work situation. My current activities are dramatically increasing, but I continue to have time to work on this after work and during lunch hour. Also, as I get feedback from users, I will try to incorporate those into the software (For example, the active notification was a user request).

Below is functionality I am planning on adding, in no particular order: 

• Ability to send paging when a system goes down. 
• Ability to monitor not only IP systems by ping, but also SNMP. 
• Ability to have different Notifications for different devices. 
• Ability to monitor non-IP devices such as servers running netbeui or Novell, maybe even DecNet. 
• Ability to monitor links off devices (FDDI, ethernet, PPP and frame-relay). 
• Ability to send e-mail when systems goes down. 
• Ability to send daily reports through email (ex. Last 24 hour activity). 
• Ability to monitor user selected SNMP attributes. 
• Ability to monitor applications such as TELNET, SMTP, WWW, etc. 

Additional features that I would like to include but have not determine yet how to fit them - 

• Run as an NT service. 
• Ability to define consistent parameters to be monitored across devices (ex utilization, memory, etc). 
• Generic application to monitor links and devices through SNMP. 
• Ability to save to a DB system such as access or an ODBC system automatically. 

Freeware vs Shareware vs Costware (IMPORTANT) - 

So far it seems like I will be able to maintain the system freeware.  If I need to buy modules like those for SNMP, I will split the program into two separate versions.  I may put up a note of what I need and if someone could buy it for me, I will incorporate it to the program.

Many folks have asked about sending some money.  I would prefer if you find this program useful and feel guilty of taking advantage of something useful for free, the next time you stop by the bookstore buy a book for my son or other kids in my family and send it to [Gus Estrella - 1422 Fairview AV. - Havertown PA USA 19083].  He would really love it and I would appreciate it.

Bugs - 

Known Bugs -

• If user has a traceroute screen up, and tries another traceroute and/or ping, responses will go to the wrong window.

User reported bugs that I am unable to recreate on three systems and most users don't experience:

• Unable to make the BAT executable function work.
• Unable to make the logging function work.
• After BAT executes, only first line of BAT file is processed.  Everything else is ignored.

If you have seen any of these or other errors, please drop me a line.

Last word - 

Enjoy and hope this is a useful product for you.  As always, I enjoy hearing from how people are using the program and how it can be improved.