Pinkie

Pinkie is an all-in-one network monitoring and management tool that can prove useful to any administrator. It bundles a set of tools that come in handy for troubleshooting connections, performing DNS lookup operations, finding opened ports and so on.

All the functions of Pinkie are comprised within the tab-based interface, providing accessibility and ease of use. This approach keeps the desktop uncluttered and increases the working efficiency of a network administrator.

You start by adding the hostnames or the IP addresses of all the workstations in the network to the 'Workspace' area. Their status is revealed by the suggestive icons, displayed in green when the workstation is online and in red otherwise.

Pinkie automatically performs DNS lookup operations, displaying both the names and the IP addresses of the computers in your network, while the 'Bulk DNS' function helps you map hostnames to IPs for a specific range of addresses.

The package includes a traceroute function that you can use to view a list of the nodes a packet goes through when traveling across the network to its destination. It also comes with a subnet mask calculator compatible with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, as well as the 'PingSweep' tool, which retrieves data concerning all the live hosts in the network.

Among the other tools it bundles you can find a port scanner to find opened ports and a built-in TFTP server.

The purpose of Pinkie is to provide a more efficient alternative to the large number of applications network administrators must use, enabling them to perform a wide range of operations from within a single window.

Since there is a single opened application to carry out all the tasks, the computer desktop is much easier to navigate around and some storage space is saved.