14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has wrapped up the latest iteration of Network Monitor 3.4 and is now serving the release to customers through the Download Center. The tool designed to allow IT professionals to perform protocol capturing and analysis in relation to network traffic was finalized earlier this week. Network Monitor (NetMon) 3.4 RTM offers a range of enhancements which span across various areas of the utility.
At the end of April 2010, Microsoft gave green light to the Beta testing program for Network Monitor 3.4 on Connect. Early adopters that got involved in the Beta were able to provide feedback to the software giant and influence the evolution of NetMon 3.4. It took the Redmond company less than two months to take version 3.4 of the Network Monitor from Beta to RTM.
IT pros that have already played around with the Network Monitor 3.4 Beta bits, know that the new version offers a range of improvements, including new features, a redesigned UI, better performance, as well as new application programming interfaces (APIs). Paul Long, a member of the Network Monitor team, enumerated some of the changes in NetMon 3.4 when the Beta went live at the end of April.
“Window Layouts - We now include 3 different, completely customizable layouts.
- Column Management and Layouts - Besides making it dead simple to find the column customizer, we provide a set of column layouts that you can customize and switch between.
- Color Rules - Again we created a button upfront so our color feature is exposed and simple to access.
- "Live" Experts - Previously you could only run experts on a saved trace. Now we enable this feature on "Live" captures by creating a snapshot of the data before launching the expert.
- Fixed-Width Font - We've heard that you want to view your frame summary information as a fixed width font.
- Parser Configuration Management - Parser performance has always been a nagging issue. The more complete the parsing, the slower the performance. And switching to a simpler parser set required some acrobatics not easily accessible by mere mortals. Now switching between parsers sets is as easy as choosing one from the Parser Profiles drop down menu.
High Performance Filtering - Using a limited set of fully qualified filters, you can attempt to filter out more of the incoming traffic before it reaches the disk. This way you avoid the disk load to the system from buffering in situations where you are interested in a fraction of the total traffic. Please review the documentation in our Help file for more details.
- High-precision Timestamps - In the past our driver didn't use the highest precision time stamp possible. Now instead of seeing a bunch of frames the same time, they appear with more granular time stamps.
- Process Tracking in NMCap - By adding the /CaptureProcesses switch to NMCap you can capture process information just like the UI.
- UTC Timestamps - You now have the option to view new traces taken with Network Monitor 3.4 using UTC relative timestamps.
- 802.11n & Raw IP Frame Support - Network Monitor now supports monitor mode on 802.11n networks on Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 and later operating systems as well as Raw IP Frames on Microsoft Windows 7.
- API Updates - We've added support for the new profile sets in the API so you can take advantage of this new feature.”
Network Monitor 3.4 is available for download here.