Handy network/security web analysis tool

[somanyholes]

Think this may appeal / be of use to many on here.

Here's a nifty little tool to use in analyzing your network connection from the folks at ICSI at Berkeley.  Useful for security or other purposes. ICSI Netalyzr link http://n9.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/

[Rik]

Great link, So.

[talos]

Very good and probably very handy, I just wish I knew what it all meant

[Rik]

I was hoping that So would tell us.

[somanyholes]

you lot know more that you are letting on

if you have queries just ask

[Rik]

How long have you got, So?

[Sebby]

I'm using IE6 here at work, and it doesn't seem to work on it (but then what does?!). I'll look later.

[Steve]

This was the only real wobble it threw up



"Your ISP's DNS resolver requires 1700 msec to conduct an external lookup.
This is particularly slow, and you may see significant performance degradation as a result."

Same result with Opendns so I am not sure what that means or if its relevant . I would have thought that degree of delay would be noticeable.

[kinmel]

It gives OpenDNS a clean bill of health and confirms that Idnet are not blocking any ports. 

Als AVG proxies are correctly intercepting mail in both directions and my mail servers are not listed on Spamhaus 

A very handy tool

[zappaDPJ]

No real problems here. My system clock is 17 seconds off and www.capitalone.com is a dead URL. I think I can live with that 

[Sebby]

I'm home now and using a decent browser, so was about to run the test. My only problem is "Your DNS resolver returns results even when no such server exists", which is because OpenDNS takes you to their page in this case.

[Simon]

Halfway through it, F-Secure flagged that a virus had been removed.  Don't know what part that was, but the summary said:

# Certain protocols are blocked in outbound traffic
# Your computer's clock is slightly fast

[somanyholes]

the virus alert is the eicar test file being downloaded, which will be used for checking if things are being filtered. Bit of info on it here, http://n9.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/faq.html#eicar . It looks like some of your tests have been blocked due to local security policies e.g. firewalls etc ...

[Simon]

Yes, that's what it seems, So.  At least I know my firewall is working. 

[Rik]

The one bit I didn't understand was this:

We estimate your uplink as having 840 msec of buffering. This level can in some situations prove somewhat high, and you may experience degraded performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large uploads. Real-time applications, such as games or audio chat, may also work poorly when conducting large uploads at the same time.

[Simon]

[Rik]

Me too.

[cavillas]

It doesn't seem to make any difference so I suppose it can be ignored...ignorance is bliss.

[Rik]

I thought Bliss was a chocolate bar, Alf? 

[cavillas]

Ahh!! Normality reigns again 

[Rik]

It does, Alf. 

[Steve]

The one bit I didn't understand was this:

We estimate your uplink as having 840 msec of buffering. This level can in some situations prove somewhat high, and you may experience degraded performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large uploads. Real-time applications, such as games or audio chat, may also work poorly when conducting large uploads at the same time.

I got this also, I wonder whether one function of a modem is to act as a buffer to permit a continuous stream of data to be sent.

[Rik]

It's possible, Steve.

[somanyholes]

have a read of http://n1.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/info_buffer.html

I don't get that error from work. Will try it from home when I get in, again that won't be an idnet connection...

[Rik]

Any idea if we can control the buffer size, So?