All hardware has a unique MAC address associated with it, including your PC adapter card. This MAC address can be added to access control list in the wireless router. Only devices added to the router’s access control list are allowed to be connected.

The AirSnare screen may turn RED as it discovers new unfriendly MAC addresses. Any traffic sent from that MAC address to the network will be logged in the Unfriendly MAC Watch Window (see to the top right) for you to determine if the MAC address really is Unfriendly or if you just perhaps missed a device on your network somewhere.

You can download AirSnare from here. For more on how to use AirSnare, read the AirSnare Users Guide.

It is easy to use, just select one of the four methods and specify the target, it will get scan and return all the MAC addresses of your local or remote computer and also of any computer within the specified range of IP addresses. All detected computers and their MAC addresses are shown in the list of scan results. You can save or export the results to several text formats

Find MAC Address features:

• Getting the MAC address of the local computer.
• Getting the MAC address of one remote computer either by its name or IP address.
• Getting the MAC addresses of all computers on the network.
• Getting the MAC addresses of all computers within the specified range of IP addresses.
• Four methods for finding MAC addresses (ARP, NetBIOS, NetAPI, WMI).
• Detecting the manufacturer of the network card by its MAC address.
• Detecting the names of network devices (only if WMI is used).
• Searching the scan results.
• Saving the scan results to and loading them from a file in the XML format.
• Exporting the network scan results to text files or a Web document.

You can download Find MAC Address from it website. For more on how to use Find MAC Address, read the Find Mac address user manual.

MAC address is actually hard coded in the NIC card and cannot be changed. Technitium MAC Address Changer instructs Windows to use MAC address it has specified in windows registry. It writes a value into the windows registry value ‘NetworkAddress’ in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\ {4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1- 08002bE10318}\[ID of NIC]. When the network adapter is enabled, Windows searches for the registry value ‘NetworkAddress’ for the MAC address. If a value is present, windows will use it as MAC address, if not, windows will use the hard coded manufacturer provided MAC address.

Technitium MAC Address Changer features:

• Identifies the preset applied to currently selected Network Interface Card (NIC) automatically making it easy to identify settings.
• Changes MAC address of Network Interface Card (NIC) including Wireless LAN Cards, irrespective of its manufacturer or its drivers.
• Has latest list of all known manufacturers (with corporate addresses) to choose from. You can also enter any MAC address and know which manufacturer it belongs to.
• Allows you to select random MAC address from the list of manufacturers by just clicking a button.
• Restarts your NIC automatically to apply MAC address changes instantaneously.
• Allows you to create Configuration Presets, which saves all your NIC settings and makes it very simple to switch between many settings in just a click and saves lot of time.
• Allows you to Import or Export Configuration Presets to or from another file, which saves lot of time spent in reconfiguration.
• Allows you to load any Configuration Presets when TMAC starts by just double clicking on any Configuration Preset File (*.cpf file extension).
• Has command line interface which allows you to perform all the tasks from the command prompt or you can even create a DOS batch program to carry out regular tasks.
• Allows you to export a detailed text report for all the network connections.
• Displays all information you would ever need to know about your NIC in one view like Device Name, Configuration ID, Hardware ID, Connection Status, Link Speed, DHCP details, TCP/IP details etc.Displays total bytes sent and received through the NIC.
• Displays current data transfer speed per second and DHCP lease obtained and lease expires time.
• Allows you to configure IP Address, Gateway and DNS Server for your NIC, enable/disable DHCP, Release/Renew DHCP IP address, and configure Interface Metric quickly and instantaneously.
• Quick keyboard shortcuts for most operations.

You can download the free MAC address changer for Windows Vista and XP here. For more screenshots, visit the Technitium screenshot page.

[Via TechDotBlog]

This new functionality introduced by VirtualWiFi enables many new applications, which were not possible earlier using a single WLAN card. It interacts with the wireless card device driver at the lower end, and network protocols at the upper end. The buffering protocol is implemented in the kernel, while the switching logic is implemented as a user-level service. Virtual WiFi uses a network hopping scheme to switch the wireless card across the desired wireless networks. Switching between networks is transparent to the applications, such that the user feels she is connected to multiple wireless networks simultaneously. VirtualWiFi also provides users with a command-line interface to dynamically add and remove connectivity to a network.

With VirtualWiFi:

• You can connect to a guest’s machine or play games over an ad hoc network, while surfing the web via an infrastructure network.
• You can use VirtualWiFi to connect your ad hoc network, which may contain many nodes, to the Internet using only one node.
• VirtualWiFi can help make your home infrastructure network elastic by extending its access to nodes that are out of range of your home WiFi Access Point.

To download VirtualWiFi for Windows XP, click here. For more on how to use VirtualWiFi, visit the VirtualWiFi usage page.

TFTP stands for “Trivial File Transfer Protocol”, a simple form of the FTP. TFTP server is commonly used to boot diskless workstations, upload/download executable images and configurations to routers, switches, hubs, XTerminals, etc.

TFTP Server is useful when you have a lot of network devices and want to store all the configuration files and operating system binary images in a safe place.

SolarWinds TFTP Server is a free, you can download it from the SolarWinds Download page.

Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics will:

• Display your public IP address
• Display your public domain name
• Test download speed/bandwidth
• Test upload speed/bandwidth

There are many factors which affect the loading rate of websites. Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics will automatically check whether Internet connection is working or not when a website can not be loaded, and a list of tools for network troubleshooting.

Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics helps you troubleshoot with some diagnostics test such as Ping Server, Trace to Server, Ping Myself, Trace to Myself, Retry This, Google Cache, Wayback and Whois. This is a great application.

You can download the latest version of Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2450.

With NTRadmin, you can remotely manage all your local and remote network computers and servers with just a few mouse-clicks, all you need is a browser and an Internet connection.

NTRadmin combines two of the most popular modes on the internet right now: customer service and social networking. It is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) remote systems management tool that includes customer support and Spain’s first social network. In the customer service, you can receive technical support from other members, exchange ideas and experiences amongst themselves, and develop new functionality to be incorporated into the product or shared with other customers. In the social networking area, you can talk to other systems-professionals, and invite their contacts to join the community.

NTRadmin features:

Network Management

• Manage all IT assets either within a network or via a simple internet connection
• Gain remote control when needed in order to diagnose and resolve issues instantaneously
• Create groups, transfer files to users and remotely turn computers on or off

Task Management through NTRadmin Bots

• Run or schedule one-time or periodic tasks
• Design tasks for individual computers, a selected group or the entire network
• Launch tasks using the NTRadmin Bots – with or without user involvement
• Deploy network tasks, even when computers are offline
• Access a detailed performance report of executed tasks

File Management

• Upload files and installation packages
• Store, group and organize files centrally for future deployment
• Access files from anywhere
• Transfer files of any size to an individual computer, a selected group or to the entire network

Community

• Join our community to increase and exchange information and knowledge
• Receive technical support from NTRglobal or the NTRadmin community
• Propose or exchange new Bots and ideas within the community

Message Center

• Receive all notifications centrally
• Get system messages, alerts and requests from users
• Obtain task completion confirmations

NTRadmin is available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and as a license for your own servers. You can speak with other professionals within the sector in order to expand your customer, provider, and expert-advisor. To try the NTRadmin for 15 days, click here to register.

ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter remains in the system tray and displays the approximate bandwidth consumed for the session, day and month. This will be useful for people with limited bandwidth/month.

ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter features:

• Option to make meter always visible.
• Transparency of meter can be adjusted.
• Option to exclude bandwidth during certain period of day.
• Shortcuts to enable/disable flash and images in Internet Explorer

ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter is a freeware, you can download it from here.

mon.itor.us provides 24 x 7 network and website monitoring service with personalized interactive interface, where you can add server performance and availability tests, get uptime reports, track visitors, check CPU, memory and other systems resources, add contacts to get the alert notifications.

mon.itor.us can monitor both inside and outside of your network firewall. End-user availability tests will be performed from geographically distributed servers as well from customer locations.

mon.itor.us is free and does not require downloads or software to install. mon.itor.us runs your tests at specific intervals 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year to insure that your customers and users can reach your website. If mon.itor.us detects a failure, an email alert is sent to you. When your website is active again, you are notified as well. mon.itor.us tracks failures and logs a report of the uptime/downtime of your website per day/week/month.

mon.itor.us has an excellent user interface and charting. The Chart view is an Ajax component which draws the chart right within the client’s browser, and due to it the filtering/re-drawing and view change processes are fast.

Benefits of Mon.itor.us:

• mon.itor.us lets you know when your site is not available
• we monitor your site from the web, so we check what you user actually will see (services that run on your server, which can give you a false sense of security).
• mon.itor.us identifies the problems before your customers even notice it
• mon.itor.us test your site performance from different geographic locations
• mon.itor.us build upon fault tolerant architecture so we guarantee high availability of our service
• you can use mon.itor.us to report service level uptime to your customers
• you can do real-time monitoring using personalize screens
• you can check you site performance at any particular day
• for every test, we maintain a log of all failures and notifications, which you can view anytime
• you will get web application advantages (no installation, high security) with desktop application user experience (fast response, customization, real time notification)
• we provide historical performance trends also available for download as pdf or CSV
• we provide multiple online views – chart, table, calendar, preview.
• we can monitor HTTP, E-Mail (SMTP or POP3), FTP and any other protocols using industry proven Nagios monitoring tool
• instantly available use – no even signup needed
• monitoring on 24/7 basis
• we provide server problems report also as RSS feeds
• If you are looking for a reliable hosting company you find a few pages hosted by your potential host, and check their uptime with our monitoring tool.

I’ve been looking for a free service like this for a while now. Most hosting companies provide network monitoring to check that web server is up, but they would not check if your application is really functioning. Currently mon.itor.us is on beta release and support only email alert, but future releases will support SMS as well as IM types of alert. I’m really looking forward to it.

For more information on how to use this mon.itor.us, visit the Help page or watch the Video Tour.

Nagios Checker logs into Nagios, and reports on network problems. Nagios Checker allows you to poll multiple Nagios servers, and set an apache login & password. It supports SSL urls.

In the extension settings dialog simply fill the start page URL of your Nagios web interface, eg. http://www.yourfirm.com/nagios/ and let the button to locate status script url.

Nagios Checker is succesfully tested with Nagios 2.5+, 2.0b4, 1.5, 1.3 and 1.2. For translators: Please, use BabelZilla.org for translating. You can download the latest version of Nagios Checker from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3607.