4 Free Internet and Network Monitoring, Scanning and Reporting Tools

Whether you are just a regular computer user or a Computer Network Administrator, you will need to keep an eye on your internet and network bandwidth to ensure your data security and any other suspicious activity. Following tools will help you monitor, analyze, scan different aspects of a network and provide you with the detailed reports.

1. LAN Search – Free Network File Locator

  

Are you looking for documents, database and spreadsheet files on the corporate intranet? Do you want to find music, video or software on your home network? Are you a network administrator? Free utility for fast file searching across LAN network. Search for specific file names or specific file types (e.g. all MP3 files). It provides a fast search engine and lets you search hidden network resources, restricted access resources, IP subnets, LAN FTP servers and much more. It comes with a built-in password manager to store network logins for resources with restricted access. Copy, move or rename network items and resources. Result sorting, filtering, export, search within results, command line switches support, and more.

Download Network Locator Portable (520 KB)
Download Network Locator (685 MB)

2. Bandwidth Monitoring and Usage Reporting Free Tool

 

NetWorx is simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your network bandwidth. Collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. Identify possible sources of network problems. Track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks. Monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (e.g. Ethernet or PPP). Set alerts when the network connection goes down or in case of suspicious activity (e.g. unusually heavy data flow). It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system. The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dialup duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.

 

• Find out and monitor how fast your Internet connection is.
• Find out and monitor how much Internet traffic you consume.
• Verify whether your ISP charges your Internet usage fairly.
• Detect a suspicious network activity on your computer.
• Perform simple network tests such as ping and trace route.
• Be notified about excessive Internet usage.
• Clear graphic and/or numeric display.
• Usage reports with export to a variety of file formats, including Excel, MS Word and HTML.
• Permits close supervision of uploads and downloads.
• Works with dial-up, ISDN, cable modems, ADSL, Ethernet cards, and more.
• Includes network information & testing tools with advanced netstat that displays applications using your Internet connection.
• Scalable to your own modem download capabilities.
• Option to notify user or disconnect from the Internet automatically when network activity exceeds a certain level.
• Speed meter to accurately time downloads and report the average transfer rates.
• Dial-up session journal with detailed information about every session.
• Absolutely free and does not contain any adware/spyware/malware.

Download Bandwidth Monitoring Tool Portable (1.49 MB)
Download Bandwidth Monitoring Tool (1.64 MB)

3.  Network Scanner

 

Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP scanner with a modern interface and several advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and general users interested in computer security. The program pings computers, scans for listening TCP ports and displays which types of resources are shared on the network (including system and hidden). In addition, it allows to mount shared folders as network drives, browse them using Windows Explorer, filter the results list and more. Network Scanner can also check for a user-defined port and report back if one is open. It can also resolve host names and auto-detect local and external IP range. It supports remote shutdown and Wake-On-LAN.

 

Key Features

• Pings computers.
• Does not require administrative privileges.
• Detects hardware (MAC) addresses even across routers.
• Detects hidden shared folders (normally invisible on the network) and write accessible shares.
• Detects your internal and external IP addresses.
• Scans for listening TCP ports and SNMP services.
• Retrieves currently logged-on users.
• You can mount and explore network resources.
• Can launch external third party applications.
• Exports results to HTML, XML, CSV and TXT
• Supports Wake-On-LAN, remote shutdown and sending network messages.
• Retrieves potentially any information via WMI.
• Retrieves information from remote registry.
• It is absolutely free, requires no installation, and does not contain any adware/spyware/malware.

Download Network Scanner (710 KB)

4.  Personal Firewall (For Advanced Users)

 The Personal Firewall is a free network firewall designed to protect PC against attacks from the Internet or via a local area network. Personal Firewall offers customizable security using user-defined rules for packet filtering. It works at a low level and also allows you to create rules based on non-IP protocols such as ARP. It supports multiple network adapter configurations. This allows you to apply a rule, for example, for just a modem connection or you could apply separate rules for each system interface. With a flexible filtering system, trusted MAC address checking feature and separate network adapter configuration you can even use it on a router or a server. Additional features include password protection, logging and more.

Download Personal Firewall (879 KB)