MRTG is free and is an excellent tool to monitor bandwidth on links/ports/equipment. It can be expanded to monitor activity on a server or printer or just about any SNMP enabled device. (http://www.netmon.org/mrtg_tools.htm)
Show Traffic is quick and simple to see what traffic is hitting a specific port/LAN segment. (http://demosten.com/showtraf/) Event Sentry Light to monitor Windows NT/2000/2003/XP Event Logs. Has filters and is very configurable. Great way to catch people hacking the local admin accounts on a workstation. <evil grin> (http://www.netikus.net) It's not 5 but that's all I can think of this early in the morning. Jim Hunt Network & Systems Engineer Northwestern School Corporation Technology Department Network Monitoring Tools & Tutorials http://www.netmon.org Featured in Network Computing Magazine -----Original Message----- From: Kristofer Mcconnell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 6:57 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Free utiities To all, What are everyone's top 5 free utilities that help troubleshoot, administer, and apply security to their networks, systems, and such? These tools can be used from anything from networking to disk fragmenting. I like trying new applications that help with the most mundane and trivial network occurrences. I like applications that help me with my day to day operations and are easy to use and interpret. Thanks, Kristofer Mc Connell Web Admin Prudential Financial ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------