PCTips3000 » network

A Free 64-bit FTP Client For Windows, Finally!

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:02:59 +0000

Ever tried to find a FTP client fully compatible with your 64-bit Windows Vista or 7? Obviously, there’s not only one program to fit the description, but when talking about freebies that work properly on 64-bit operating systems, things are getting really interesting… and today I decided to tell you a few words about a free 64-bit FTP client for Windows, namely Null FTP.

The Null FTP client is available as both free and paid versions (this one’s called Null FTP Pro), and while the free edition has some limitations, most average users won’t feel the difference. Anyway, if you want to know what you’re missing, you should know that the free version does not allow Z compression, can only work with 3 concurrent transfers and the number of registered servers is also 3. At last, the free version has a TCP buffer size limited to 128KB.

These being said, I should also add multilanguage support, integrity checks, and the fact that you get no additional restrictions when using the free version, except those already mentioned above. Null FTP’s current version is 1.3, the setup package has 5.8 MB in size, and… I guess that’s all. Have a nice weekend, folks!

Fastest Web Browser? Ha, ha!!!

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:29:01 +0000

I am sick and tired of all this crap about fastest Web browser. Really, there’s no such a thing! The best browser for one’s computer depends a lot on the OS and hardware setup, and if you want to find out what’s the fastest Web browser on your setup, I got a little something for you…

… Futuremark’s Peacekeeper, a free browser benchmark that should help you sleep better from now on. No, it doesn’t come with any sleeping pills, it only comes with some results to compare yours with, but let me warn you about one thing: before crying when you see how low are your results, take a closer look at the hardware used to obtain the results available as samples, all right?

Speaking for myself, I was pretty happy to notice that my old Athlon X2 4000+ Brisbane processor isn’t that slow as I expected, when compared to the much powerful Phenom II X4 940 – at least when it comes to rendering Web pages, since I have no doubt it will get a serious beating in various scenarios that involve a lot of multitasking!

These being said, I hardly wait to hear about your results! In my case, I only messed with Opera 10.60, Chrome 5 and IE 8, obtaining the following results: 4054, 3781, 548. These being said, the fastest Web browser on my computer is Opera, without a single doubt. Now, tell me about yours and make me upgrade my hardware even faster than I had in mind!

Free Ping Tool For Windows

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:57:09 +0000

Some rumors say that, lately, Google started to consider the speed of every site when awarding a ranking, so knowing how fast is yours when compared to the competition is a good action to take, before anything else. On the other hand, I think this is only a rumor, but anyway – knowing how fast is your server is still useful. After all, we all pay for our hosting plans, so we should know exactly what we get, right?

The free ping tool for Windows I just bumped into is called PingMaster and comes from AgataSoft, a company that released a few freebies and commercial programs so far. To download PingMaster, just go to this page and click the corresponding download link (the setup package has only 550KB). To use it… just install the thing, give it a go, and do what it takes, it’s as easy as 1-2-3!

No, I am not joking here! All you have to do is add the hosts to check (up to 5, unfortunately), set the maximum timeout and delay values, press the Start button, and let it run… Think about running this program continuously and saving the log to a file. Pretty useful when you say that your site was down, and the hosting company says it wasn’t!

More than being able to ping various locations, PingMaster also has a traceroute utility and works great with all popular Windows versions, including Vista and 7. Sweeet!

Web-Based FTP Client Needed? Here It Is!

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:34:53 +0000

If you hate installing stuff, I have some good news for you, in case you lived on a remote island so far – there are plenty of Web-based tools for most tasks you can think of! Even better, they are usually free, so if you use a FTP client only from time to time, there’s no need to install any single bit of code, since tools like Net2FTP can easily get the job done!

As you surely figured out already, Net2FTP is a Web-based FTP client, but it’s surely nice to see it has quite a few features, including a plain text editor, support for ZIP archives, rename/chmod capabilities and it can even filter out files based on the filename, last modification time and file size. Not bad for a free tool, don’t you agree?

To make things interesting even for developers, Net2FTP is also available for download, so you can host the script on your own server, allowing only connection to some FTP servers or using advanced rules (keyword-based filters, IP ban, and others). All in all, this is a tool worthy of everyone’s attention, so get to it, will you?

Geocities Pages, Reloaded

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:35:35 +0000

Some say mankind is lost, and if you look around, you may be tempted to agree. Fortunately, there are a lot things worth fighting for, and of them is history. Since we should be talking about computers and Internet here, it’s about the history of these domains, obviously. Founded back in late 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner as Beverly Hills Internet (BHI), Geocities became one of the Internet’s icons, having about 38 million user-built pages before its closure, a sad event that took place on the 26th of October, 2009.

Seeing a Web hosting service going down is nothing out of ordinary, but seeing one like Geocities going down, that’s really sad, as I said, since this actually killed a part of the Internet as we know it. Fortunately, not all is lost, because someone came to the rescue. Just one man, some hardware, a great idea, and a lot of work – Reocities!

This site is a great resource for everyone, no matter if they were online during Geocities’ days of glory or not. Speaking for myself, I only had a friend with a Geocities page, but he deleted that one after a while. Anyway, history is history, and we should preserve it, so I say a big THANK YOU to Jacques Mattheij from The Netherlands, the man behind this huge effort to keep as many Geocities pages alive after death!

What you should do? Well, if you checked Reocities‘ main page, I am sure you also got to the other interesting parts, but if you haven’t, I strongly suggest to check at least the Open Letter and the Making Of pages. The rest of it is silence… RIP Geocities and welcome to the virtual world, Reocities!

Test My Connection, Please!

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:30 +0000

You probably know how to use the ping command when it comes to testing packet loss on a Windows computer connected to the Internet, but if you don’t, then I have some good news for you – you won’t ever have to learn how to use it, because there’s a Web-based tool that gets the same job done… and does it even better!

First of all, let me tell you what’s the catch with the ping command I mentioned above. According to the official mumbo-jumbo from Microsoft.com, this command “verifies IP-level connectivity to another TCP/IP computer by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request messages,” so to test your computer’s connectivity with the Yahoo servers, for example, you’ll have to type in something like ping -n 250 yahoo.com in a command prompt window, and then wait for the command to complete. Now, let’s leave that sad black and white window aside and move to something more interesting!

The name is PingTest, but you can also call it PingTest.net. Even more, PingTest.net Beta, if you’re crazy about names, but the tool behind the name is great! OK, so what’s that special about a site that should determine the quality of your Internet connection? Let’s see…

Coming from the same company that’s behind SpeedTest.net, namely Ookla, PingTest looks and works about the same way as that connection speed test, only that this time, you’ll have to choose a server, then wait for 250 data packets to be sent, received, and then watch the results. These results include packet loss (anything above 0% is something to be worried about), ping value (the lower, the better, since this is the time needed for a packet to go from your computer to the server and back – but don’t expect to see ~20 ms ping if you’re testing with a server located a few thousand miles away…), jitter (the lower, the better – this is the variance in measuring the parameters above in successive tests).

More than the above, you’ll get a line quality rating, and if you get a B rating or worse, don’t worry – it’s all about distance, after all, since you can’t expect for a connection from US to Australia to get the A rating, right? Don’t get me wrong, maybe you have some kind of uber-optical fiber connection to your server, but in my case, testing with a New Zealand-based server gave me 357 ms ping, 1 ms jitter, and 0% packet loss, so I am not really concerned about that D rating – after all, there are over 10k miles to that server…

Need A Web Proxy? Check It First!

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:55:24 +0000

If you’re serious about your privacy, then you must admit that, sometimes, you really need to take advantage of the free Web proxies available online. Unfortunately, no proxy seems to live forever, and this is where Web Proxy Checker steps into the spotlight…

I know it may not be such a great story this one, but I know for sure that some people will be grateful for the info regarding this program here, simply because I know how it feels to try using 20 proxies in a row just to find that they’re all dead. You don’t want to feel that, believe me!

Web Proxy Checker is a small piece of code for the Windows platform that can check SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP/HTTPS proxies, no matter if they’re using authentication or not. Even more, it can check for URL or availability of connections to a specified port.

This free program requires about 2 MB of free space on your drive, and can easily handle redirects and download proxy list from a given URL (during my time with the program, I noticed this feature doesn’t always work as supposed to, but it’s good to have it, nevertheless!). Its interface may not be top-notch, but it gets the job done, it’s free, and that’s what really matters, after all!

If you want to know more about working with the program, here’s the easy way – once you install Web Proxy Checker, you have to load a proxy list you have in a text file, or simply paste URLs pointing to proxy lists right inside the interface (first text input field, you can’t miss it!). Once you do that, you can simply press the green Play button or take some time to mess with the settings available.

Hmm… I guess that’s all, but don’t be fooled by the looks of this program – Web Proxy Checker comes with full Windows 7 support, so there’s no need to worry about compatibility – just worry about those proxies that may refuse to work!

Remotely Control Your PC Via Twitter!

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:58:04 +0000

Without a single doubt, Twitter is useless. Sure, sure, a lot of people will jump up and say I’m crazy, but my Twitter account is even less useful than my Hi5 account (at least some high school friend managed to find me on Hi5), so I just have an account that sits idle and sometimes I got emails regarding some spammer who is following me. Wow!

Today, I just discovered that this service could be of some use, at least if you think that sending commands to your computer via Twitter is something you really need and can’t be done otherwise. Fortunately for those who will really digg this, we’re talking about a free software, available for both Windows and Mac OS X, namely TweetMyPC.

While I installed the program and messed with it for a few minutes, I actually don’t need such a thing, and seeing there’s no serious documentation to go through didn’t help me getting to know TweetMyPC better, either. Considering the above, I guess we should take for granted what others say about this program – it can shut down or restart your PC, download stuff, and even send files while you’re away, all with the help of Twitter messages. Sounds great in theory, I must confess.

The best part of it all is that commands you can use are being plain English words, so you can’t forget about “Logoff”, “Reboot”, “Lock”, “Hibernate”, “Standby,” and so on. Even more than the above, you can tweet “Screenshot” while being away from your PC, and TweetMyPC will take a screenshot of your remote computer and then post it on Twitpic. At last, you’ll get the link to that image. Awesome!

To download and upload files, TweetMyPC needs to use a Gmail account, so if you don’t have one yet, you should go ahead and get it – after all, it’s free, and it’s also one of the best free email services out there, in my opinion.

Going back to what I said earlier, I don’t need such a tool yet, but if I’ll ever need the functionality provided by TweetMyPC, I probably won’t look for it anywhere else. Despite what I still think about Twitter, TweetMyPC is one hell of a free piece of code, and a must for those crazy about this microblogging service!

Need To Surf Anonymously?

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:58:13 +0000

Until a few days ago, I used to play some online game. No need to advertise it, but you should know we’re not talking about World of Warcraft and that this game I am talking about kept me interested for over 3 years. Unfortunately, some company associated with the one making the game decided to deny access to people outside North America, even to those who put real cash into it so far. When I found about it, I was very disappointed, but after a few minutes spent on the official game forums, I found out about a brilliant tool for those who need to surf anonymously or… avoid some silly IP ban, of course!

The funny part of the story is that Hotspot Shield is supposed to provide security for those using various WiFi locations, but the truth looks much better – we’re actually talking about a free tool provided by AnchorFree that can do a lot of things and is also one of the few free VPN services available. Well, some may complain about it being ad supported, but I really think that seeing those ads is a very small price to pay for having access to such an awesome resource…

… but let’s see why should you use this thing, shall we?

- Hotspot Shield is fully compatible with Mac OS X, Windows 2000/XP, and even Vista. If you have any idea about Windows 7 compatibility, please drop a comment below and enlighten us!

- While allowing you to surf anonymously, Hotspot Shield helps you by encrypting and protecting your WiFi traffic, and if you really have to use unsecured hotspots, your personal data will be locked down to keep it safe from any kind of hack attack. Is this cool, or what?

Going back to my problem, I must say it was really easy to connect to the game once I got my hands on Hotspot Shield. All I had to do was install the application, press the Connect button in the Web interface (there’s also a system tray icon you can right click and then change the language or connect to surf anonymously), wait for a few seconds to get a new IP, and then I was ready to login like nothing bad ever happened!

If your instant messaging program or file sharing application suddenly loses connection to the Internet after you install and power on Hotspot Shield, you don’t have to worry – this is something normal, and be sure to close the application when you don’t need it, because some sites/servers you were previously using may not grant access to your new IP…

NetWorx – Free Network Monitoring Software For Windows

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:13:23 +0000

If you’re a Windows user looking for network monitoring software, there are plenty of excellent tools to find, but only a few of them come free of any charge. Before moving on, I must point out that my all-time favorite is X-NetStat Professional, since it has an impressive amount of features, and after using it for a while, you will surely conclude that it’s worth the price, but leaving that behind… I must also highlight how close can get freeware products to their commercial counterparts, and NetWorx is the best example I can give you at this time.

At first sight, NetWorx seems like one of those many network monitoring software releases that will help you see how fast you’re downloading and uploading stuff, and maybe even check some statistics for a certain period. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with the statement above, because NetWorx is exactly one of those programs… only that it can also deliver much more than just some basic network monitoring/stats, as we’re going to see today.

Just hold on for a minute, because there’s something else that needs to be highlighted here – apart from the “normal” setup package, NetWorx is also available as a portable piece of code – the executable file and a DLL, to be more accurate. You can just unpack those to a folder, and then run the program, without having to bother about installing it the old way. Obviously, you can also place the files on a USB drive… and you got yourself a pretty good network monitor to take everywhere you go!

The features list includes traceroute and ping capabilities, and this is only the beginning, since NetWorx is also able to generate usage statistics, delivering daily/weekly/monthly reports, all of which can be saved as Excel/Word/HTML/plain text files, and if you want to set a transfer quota and get warnings when it has been exceeded… search no more – NetWorx also has this task covered!

As far as free network monitoring software for Windows goes, NetWorx is great. Even when I put it next to commercial products, it can still hold its ground in the eyes of most users. After all, NetWorx also has a Netstat tool available… and when you look at the Settings area, there’s only one conclusion to draw: commercial network monitoring software may be good, but you can’t go wrong with free pieces of code like NetWorx, either!

Oh, yeah – do you really want to hear what’s missing? I would like to get warnings by email, and maybe even by SMS, while the ability to save color schemes for the graph colors would also be very nice, but since NetWorx just reached version 5.0 and it won’t stop here, I am sure they’ll become available one day. After all, hope is the one to die last, right?