WhatsUp Network Monitor Application WhatsUp - Version 2.13 97.01.24 RELEASE NOTES Ipswitch, Inc. http://www.ipswitch.com NOTE: Documentation and help files have not been changed to reflect recent changes! Please review the "Enhancements in this Release" Help is available in every dialog box by pressing F1. Table of Contents: ================== Section One: Description of Product Section Two: Requirements Section Three: Enhancements in this Release Section Four: Known Problems / Additional Information SECTION ONE: Description of Product =================================== This application provides a graphical means for monitoring the status of selected hosts or network equipment on a network and a method of alerting you when those systems have problems. The alerts are visual, audio (if you have a sound card) and can be to a digital beeper or through any user designed application. This application is designed to work on Windows NT or Windows 95. WhatsUp also provides the following tools: PING: Provides the ability to measure round trip time to a remote host as well as provide reachability information. TRACEROUTE: Provides the ability to view the network path to a remote host. NSLOOKUP: Provides the ability to retrieve and view Domain Name Service information. WHOIS: Provides the ability to query WHOIS servers for user and network information. FINGER: Provides the ability to query hosts for user information. SECTION TWO: Requirements ========================= WhatsUp will run on the Windows NT 3.51 or Windows 95 operating systems. Windows NT 3.51 should have Service Pack 3 or later installed. WhatsUp is designed to work on any Winsock DLL, however we recommend that you run WhatsUp on the Ipswitch Acadia VxD stack, the Microsoft NT stack, or the Windows 95 stack. Windows NT and Windows 95 come with a WSOCK32.DLL. If you use a different vendors stack on these platforms you will need to replace the WSOCK32.DLL that comes with the system. NetBeui monitoring is supported in this version provided the network monitoring platform has the netbeui protocol installed. SECTION THREE: Enhancements in this Version =========================================== NOTE: Monitoring of Telnet port on network devices is not recommended! 97.01.24 1. Corrected problem with external program arguments 2. Reduced minimum up notification to allow after 2 downcounts. (i.e., item must have been down 2 polls to before allowing an up notification). 3. Improved scanning control. 4. Alpha pager support for 2400 and N81. 5. Increased phone number fields for pager and beeper to 39 characters and beeper code field to 20 characters. 6. Allow input of binary characters in Expect and Send service strings by use of %value as in Word%32Word where "%32" is a space. Corrected use of \r, \n and \t. 7. Corrected inappropriate use of comma's in names and info fields (converts to periods) 8. Added "Animate Icon" program option. (must exit and restart WhatsUp on NT 3.5 or 3.51) 9. Corrected state of toolbar buttons. 10. Double checks first down response. 11. Internal thread changes. 12. Added ability to change up/down beeper codes 13. Added ability to start in mini-status mode 14. Corrected improper window becoming active after closing item information windows 15. Added bitmap edit button 16. Corrected log double spacing in reports 17. Changed report time from pollcounts to minutes 18. Changed user definable services dialog SECTION FOUR: Known Problems / Additional Information ===================================================== 97.01.24 TCP monitor method does not work reliably on older Microsoft TCP stacks. Netbeui checks against a Windows NT system will fail after the first check due to invalid data being returned from the NT system. No check to verify that Netbeui requests are possible on the monitoring platform. Netbeui must be installed in order to use netbeui checks. This will be corrected in a future release. Traceroute functions will not work on a number of network stacks. They WILL work on Ipswitch Acadia and CyberSuite stacks and on Microsoft TCP/IP stack on Windows 95 and Windows NT. Some network stacks will allow you to exit the program while a POLL is in progress. However, you will end up having to reboot your system. DON'T EXIT WhatsUp WHEN A POLL IS IN PROGRESS! Click on the Stop icon or Abort button and WAIT for the poll to stop before exiting. NOTIFICATION MESSAGE VARIABLES ============================== %u = "UP" or "DOWN" %n = Display Name %h = Address/Name %a = IP Address %c = System Type %1 = Info line 1 %2 = Info line 2 %t = time (hh:mm:ss) %d = date (yy.mm.dd) %R = service returned string %S = status %s = integer status %v = down services %V = down services with "services" printed %N = notes %L = (mail only) log file (%Lnn where nn=last nn lines) ALPHA PAGER SUPPORT =================== Support for PageNet and other TAP (Telocator Alphanumeric Protocol) pagers is built in. SMTP MAIL SUPPORT ================= An IP address of a host running SMTP must be put in the Mail Gateway field. The Mail Address must contain an e-mail address that is accepted by the Mail Gateway. (This can be a simple name.) The Mail Address should not contain brackets, braces, quotes, or parenthesis. BEEPER SUPPORT ============== Internal beeper support is provided. You may find a need to increase the number of comma's in the dial string if it dials the code too soon or decrease the number of comma's if it waits too long. The default dial string is "ATDT%s,,,,%s#'. The first %s is replaced by the phone number and the second %s is replaced by the code. Most modems and beepers support the use of '#' to terminate the message and '*' to print out a dash. The timeout value that appears in the communications setup for the beeper affects how the wait after the last character is sent to hang up the phone if a transition is not recognized. An alternative for using the internal beeper code, is to call an external program of your own. Note that this can be any program to do anything you may wish to do. Note that this program may get called multiple times in a single poll. The presence of a program name in the notification enables the external program. The following infomation is made available to the external program via the command line. arg 1: either DN or UP arg 2: the phone number as specified in the notification configuration arg 3: the code as specified in the host down action configuration arg 4: the ip address of the host examples: 0: beeper.exe 1: DN 2: 8694297 3: 3333 4: 127.0.0.1 0: beeper.exe 1: DN 2: 8694297 3: 2222 4: 127.0.0.1 0: beeper.exe 1: UP 2: 8694297 3: 2222 4: 127.0.0.1 The external program is executed with SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE. The UP message will only be sent if the packets lost is greater than beep count when the host comes back alive.