This page is a start....:)
I will try and add to it as time and questions come up.
1. What is the purpose of this stuff?
These tools are to help people.
Generally speaking system administrators, network engineers, BBS sysops, power users
are the primary focus of these utilities. However everyone is welcome to use them.
During the setup/installation of network servers and systems it is often advantageous
to test the new server/system from a location not on the local network.
In other words to see your system as those on the "internet at large" see it.
This is often difficult to do, as firewall rules, NAT, and local routing may make things
look much different on the local LAN than they appear from the "internet at large".
These tools should help over come most of the problems.
2. How do I use this stuff?
The main difficulty that most users have is the load time. These tools are slow, by
most peoples standard of a reasonable "page load time". There is a caution on most
every input page that the output page will take more time to load than you might expect.
A lot of folks just do not seem to "get it". These tools are slow, because they must
completely finish the requested function before they pass ANY information back to the
requester.
Another issue is the input string. These tools will accept only dotted quads
( numeric IP addresses like 11.22.33.44 ) or a simple FQDN
( fully qualified domain name like www.yahoo.com ). They will not accept any other
input, this is for security reasons.
The best way to "see what it is about" is to use the ping tool to ping a host
you know is up and running. Note how long it takes to complete your request
( ping is one of the faster tools ).
Observe the results, and then refresh the http://www.hq42.net/net_tools/index.php
to see how the information is stored, so that you may refer to it again during your
trouble shooting.
3. What's with the table on the http://www.hq42.net/net_tools/index.php page?
The table has several functions. One is to save or store the out come of your tests
so you can see if your changes are helping or making things worse. There are lots of
things of this nature that an admin may want to compare, average ping time, or number
of hops in a trace-route, or perhaps "fetch time" for a web-server test.
Another function is to facilitate trouble shooting a network that does not have skilled
network staff on site. Often the troubleshooter will ask an "unskilled helper" at the
branch office to preform a test, and then they have to read ( or fax ) the results back
to the data center for the troubleshooter to analyze. This is slow and aggravating to
both parties.
The table will show all records in which your IP was the requester OR THE TARGET.
SO if 11.22.33.44 pings 11.22.34.45 both parties can see the results on
http://www.hq42.net/net_tools/index.php as soon as it is complete
( you may need to refresh the page ).
The color code is:
Gray is an input error.
This is usually caused by not following the directions on the input page.
If you get a gray block, after carefully following the input instructions
please let me know with a comment to the sysop. I will look into the input
filter code block, and correct the issue.
Yellow is a "success with warning".
This can be caused by many things... a common example is pinging a numeric
address that has no associated host name. The ping will succeed but you will
be warned to use only the numeric address in future tests.
Red is the failure code.
The reasons for this are legion, and that is why we are here doing this in
the first place.
Blue is a communications record.
These are created by comments to the sysop or the "message a remote host"
function from the tools menu. Message records are visible only to the sender
and the recipient ( and the sysop ).
They are a great help to those trouble shooting a "remote host" located on
another continent, especially when phone communication is poorly implemented
and/or costly.
Green is a record of success.
The details of the test will be accessible through the live link in the record for
future reference, and/or forwarding to other members of the trouble shooting team.
It does not mean you got the results you wanted/needed/expected...
it means the test ran as it should.
4. How about a port scanner?
A port scanner is a great security tool. It is one of the first things you would want
to do after a new bastion host comes on line. The problems are several. Port scanning
can be used by those with bad intentions to locate vulnerable systems. Port scanning will
often annoy system administrators by setting off intrusion alarms, triggering IDS
systems, causing "paging in the middle of the night" automatic IP blocking, snmp trap
alarms and lot of other issues.
If I can devise a way to overcome ( or at least greatly diminish ) these issues...
a port scanner may well be added to the existing tools.
On 5 July 2003 Added port scanner. It will only scan the connected/requesting host.
If no security issues develope it will stay and more features may be added as time allows.
5. I need to test my server on a non-standard port. How do I do this?
2 March 2005 added the ability to test a custom (non-standard) port on YOUR CONNECTED HOST.
The ability to query any port on any host will probably NEVER be implemented.
Absent a scheme to register "trusted users" the potential for abuse is simply too great.
6. Why are the pages so plain?
The pages are about as plain and simple as they can be to speed loading over slow links
like cell phones, PDAs, WAP devices and dialup connections. The pages need to work on
non-graphical browsers, and function without flash, VBscript, java or other "add on".
However I am open to suggestions for improvement, especially usability issues.
7.How can I help?
Provide feedback and bug reports to the SysOp.
Link to this URL from your website. http://www.hq42.net/
Please do not link to internal pages as they change frequently.
8. Do not script against this site.
The tools were written and placed here for free public use, however like all networks
this one has limited resources. Automated queries are not permitted. They use too much
bandwidth, inconvenience other users, and annoy upstream DNS and whois providers.
Attempting to script will get you locked out of the site.
This page last modified: March 08 2005
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