subject: Best free Android Apps for network professionals [print this page] Best free Android Apps for network professionals
Network professionals are often on call. Too often a simple thing pops up in these on-call periods that could be quickly solved with the right tools. As a result, many network professionals are lugging around a laptop "just in case". However, Android phones are now capable of running a number of network applications that can greatly simplify these quick fixes. While not the place of the PC versions and they will not always solve your problem, those seven applications are indispensable for a network professional and can even save you from dragging out your laptop.
Ping
This handy little app does exactly what its name suggests. Need to quickly see if a host as you? Ping lets you ping by IP or DNS name. Ping is a relatively simple networking tools so that this application is as useful as the PC version.
HTTPing
Ever find yourself having to go beyond a simple ping to see if a host is working properly? For example, maybe you need to see if a Web page is actually disabled or not? HTTPing head sends a number of HTTP requests to the Web server that you specify to see if the server is up and serving pages. This is a great tool if you are responsible for one or more web servers.
ConnectBot
Ever wish you could just quickly secure shell in a box to restart a service or some other quick fix? Thanks ConnectBot, you can use your Android phone! The thing I found hardest about ConnectBot was figuring out how a VI ESC key to send. (Touch the screen during your session and a touch of ESC button will appear). ConnectBot is an incredible, ssh client. Personally, I regularly use this tool.
Network Discovery
Network Discovery is a handy little program with a very nice interface. It scans the network for devices and show you the IP addresses and names of all the devices it finds. It is also quite accurate at detecting the device type. On my network is correctly labeled my AT & T router as a router, but saw my network printer as a PC. A nice bonus to this program is that if you touch an item, will move to a new screen and do a port scan on that device. The program scans the most common ports scan and is not adjustable, but it's still a handy feature.
Port Scandroid
If you configure a port scan or scan a specific range of ports, Port Scandroid are the tools you need. You enter an IP or DNS name and start and stop a port range, and this tool will be a port scan shows all open ports. Although these instruments is very useful and free, it has an annoying feature, the phone must be held in a portrait of the adjustment to start a scan and if you flip the phone horizontally during a scan, the scan stops.
Android VNC viewer
This app just amazed me the first time that I saw. If you use VNC to a remote machine, this applies to you. This is an Android version of VNC viewer that lets you perform a remote machine running the VNC server. It takes some getting used to Android when the screen is so small and the control-alt-delete sequence is a bit tricky at first on the touch screen. However, if you just have to do something quick, this tool will be invaluable.
WiFi Analyzer
This is one of my favorite tools for finding open Wi-Fi networks when I am out and about but it's also very useful as a troubleshooting tool. WiFi Analyzer draws a graph of all WiFi networks within range, where their relative signal strength and what channel they are configured. It also closed and open networks. It will also be a channel interference based on what channels are being used to reduce.
