User Guide: IPNetMonitor Advanced Techniques and Information
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This section of the User Guide provides additional technical
information for advanced users who want to get the most from IPNetMonitor.
The following topics are covered:
Notes on IPNetMonitor Timing
These notes provide some further information on the timing data
obtained using IPNetMonitor.
Both the Test Connectivity and Trace Route tool
use the OTGetTimeStamp function to capture times accurate to less
than a millisecond. Time stamps are taken just before calling
Open Transport to send a packet, and again from the notifier function
called by Open Transport when data is received. Since the receive
time stamp is captured during interrupt processing, it should
be largely unaffected by other application time processing such
as scrolling in another window.
The Monitor tool uses STREAMS timer messages that are
synchronized with the STREAMS environment to report the number
of bytes sent and received each second. Even though the data is
captured every second, the Monitor display is updated during normal
application processing (SystemTask time) so may appear to stall
if another application is holding the processor for an extended
period. When the monitor window is again allowed to update, it
will plot previously stored data for up to the last 30 seconds.
For those familiar with STREAMS programming, the Monitor tool
only counts bytes in MDATA messages. MPROTO messages that specify
protocol commands are not counted (though attached MDATA blocks
are).
If you want to get a sense for your actual modem performance
in bits per second, you can calculate this by dividing the number
of bytes per second by 0.122 . This takes into account the bit
level packetization of data bytes used by V.34 modems versus the
serial asynchronous data stream that includes extra start and
stop bits.
For example, I downloaded an already compressed file (so there
is little further compression in the modem) from a fast server
and got the following numbers:
Max bytes/sec: 4620
|
37.8 kbps
|
Ave bytes/sec: 3325
|
27.254 kbps
|
So my average bit rate using a 28.8k modem connection was about
27 kbps.
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Customizing Monitor Graph Colors
A custom color lookup table is used for the Monitor graph colors
so that the sliding grid used as the plot background is visible
but does not compete with the plot foreground data. The use of
a custom color lookup table may cause the screen to redraw on
8-bit 256 color displays when the Monitor window is opened and
closed.
You can prevent this redrawing by deleting the 'clut' resource
in the IPNetMonitor application file (Resource ID 134, "Monitor
Plot Colors"). If no 'clut' resource is found, IPNetMonitor
will use default colors from the standard 8-bit 256 color palette.
You can also customize the Monitor plot colors by editing this
resource. The colors in the 'clut' resource correspond to the
following display colors respectively:
- Large Monitor window background
- Large Monitor window grid
- Transmit data
- Receive data
- Running average
- Small Monitor window background
- Small Monitor window grid
If you make the grid color the same as the background color so
that the grid becomes invisible, horizontal tick marks will be
added to the top and bottom of the Monitor plot.
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Launching URLs to Destinations in the Trace
Route Table
You can perform a Whois query on a destination in the Trace Route
table by selecting the corresponding row and pressing Cmd-I. If
you have Internet Config, you can also launch URLs to other applications
by pressing Cmd-1 through Cmd-4. The corresponding URL is determined
from 'STR#' resource 142 "Helper GURL schemes". The
following URL schemes are initially specified:
- telnet://
- http://
- <empty>
- <empty>
Thus you can launch a Telnet GURL to a destination in the Trace
Route table by selecting the corresponding row in the Trace Route
table and pressing Cmd-1.
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Using IPNetMonitor with Apple Internet Address
Detectors
Apple Internet Address Detectors allow you to recognize Internet
Addresses such as email, a host address, or URL in your documents
and then take action on that information. For example, you can
select any text containing one or more Internet Addresses, and
then Control-Click to bring up a contextual menu with possible
actions for any Internet Addresses in that selection. Actions
can include sending an email message or displaying a web page
for example.
Since IPNetMonitor handles the 'GURL' Apple Event, it is possible
to include IPNetMonitor tools such as ping and traceroute in the
list of available actions for an Internet Address by writing appropriate
action scripts. Kirk Batty has written a set of action scripts
for ping, traceroute, whois, and finger which you can install
in the Apple Data Detectors control panel.
Download
IAD action scripts for use with IPNetMonitor
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