About Switch Port Mapper 1.99.9.3

On February 7, 2012 we put out another minor release of the Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool. This release changes the way the Last Change Time column information is presented. It now shows the elapsed time since the port changed from 'up' to 'down' or vice versa.

It's easier to show this in a video, so here it is on youtube:



Version 2 is well under way. Please visit us at http://www.SwitchPortMapper.com/

NetScanTools Pro 11.20 Released January 19

NetScanTools Pro v11.20 was release today. It has one new tool and 2 revised tools.

The new tool is called Country to IP or ASN. Select a country from the list and find the IPv4, IPv6 or ASN records assigned or allocated to that country. This tool works from a local database that is updated with each release. It is a complementary tool to the IP to Country tool and there are now 'jump' buttons on each to switch between them. This tool is really useful if you maintain a firewall or an email server. If you prefer to block a whole country - this is where you get your information.

DHCP Server Discovery now has the ability to do DHCP Discovery on more than one network. You can now select the network interface to do the discovery on. This would apply to a laptop running both a wired and wireless connection.

Port Scanner now allows you to do a port scan on a list of IPv4 addresses. This was something that existed in v10 and earlier, but we did not have it ready for the release of version 11. It's back and better than before.

There are a few other minor fixes. This release was planned for December, but some users made suggestions that were necessary (like the DHCP changes) and here we are.

Look for the USB version patch release next week.

Kirk

Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool v1.99.9.2 Released

v1.99.9.2 was released on Friday, January 6, 2012. This release has significant improvements to the qBridge mib processing algorithm. This version was tested extensively with Juniper switches in an enterprise setting and we think you will see quite a bit of improvement when mapping switches that report using qBridge mib. Cisco users will not see any change since Cisco uses standard bridge mib for reporting (with the exception of the Small Business series). Switch brands that may see mapping improvements are HP, Juniper, Netgear, D-Link, 3Com, Linksys, SMC, Nortel and the Cisco Small Business Series.

Please visit http://www.SwitchPortMapper.com/ to get the latest release or click on Help/Check for Update from within the program. If you need more trial time, please contact us.

Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool v1.99.9.1 Released

Yes, I know the version numbers look out of control - but it's a real important minor version. Only 5 lines of code changed, but they affected the way a table was updated from qBridge mib data. It's working fine now and this was all thanks to an end-user who made me aware of the problem on Friday Dec 30 (why is it always a Friday?).

Come and get it:
http://www.SwitchPortMapper.com/

Or if you have the program installed, click on Help/Check for Update.

Recent Software Releases

We have put out several new releases in October, November and December. Let's start with the Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool. We released 1.99.6, 1.99.7, 1.99.8 and we are now on v1.99.9. These new versions address issues recently found during our work on v2.0 and we added some new minor features.

We also released ipPulse v1.81 and v1.82 in that same timeframe. The most important changes were in the secure email sending section of the program.

NetScanTools Pro was also updated with a minor release 11.11 back in October. There will be one more release of it before the end of the year.

The new IPv6ScopeFinder program was also released back in October. It's free so try it out if you use IPv6.

-Kirk

IPv6ScopeFinder

What? It's a new freeware tool designed to quickly help you locate the right Scope ID to use when trying to send packets to a neighboring link local IPv6 address. For instance, you could use it to find the ScopeID when you needed to use command line ping to find out if IPv6 is working on the workstation across the room. I'm talking about the part of the link local address after the percent sign: fe80:11:22:33%6, where '6' is the Scope ID of the network interface on your machine that connects to the network that routes packets to the machine with the IPv6 address fe80:11:22:33.

Read about it and download it here.

IsThreadDesktopComposited prevents program startup

Problem: a NetScanTools Pro v11.10 user emailed with a strange problem. He could not get NetScanTools Pro to start on Windows XP sp3, instead he would get this message: "Entry Point Not Found. The procedure entry point IsThreadDesktopComposited could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.DLL."

The first thing I did was use Dependency Walker to see if our program called that entry point in user32.dll. It did not. So I searched online and found the answer.

Apparently some misguided installers are putting a Vista file called dwmapi.dll into the Windows XP Windows\System32 directory. Some programs like NetScanTools Pro v11 are affected by this and give the IsThreadDesktopComposited error. Some people have noticed this happening after a Windows Live Messenger or Mail upgrade but I have not independently confirmed this.

Solution:
1. locate dwmapi.dll in the windows\system32 directory
2. rename or remove it
3. reboot to be sure it's unloaded from memory