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IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition Changelog

What's new in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.4 Build 14486

Nov 15, 2022
  • This is a maintenance release, with new features introduced, and bugs fixed:
  • Introduced support for monitoring templates for printers, UPS and network equipment which support SNMP protocol.
  • Added support for regular expressions in HTTP(S), DNS and SNMP monitors
  • My SQL Database monitor now supports My SQL 8.0 database monitoring.
  • Added support for the latest Microsoft OLE DB Driver “Microsoft OLE DB Driver 19 for SQL Server” in MS SQL database monitor
  • Third party tools such as Python interpreter, Apache HTTP server, OpenSSL, curl and other libraries have been updated to their latest stable versions.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.3 Build 14217 (Jun 29, 2022)

  • All third-party software components (Apache HTTP server, OpenSSL, curl and other libraries) have been updated to their latest stable versions.HTTPS monitors have been enhanced to support TLS 1.3 encryption protocol.
  • Improved accuracy of timing measurements in performance report for all monitor types: time resolution is now approx. 1 millisecond.
  • SNMP and DNS monitors have been enhanced: OCTET STRING values validation in SNMP and multiple strings to validate DNS response.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.3 Build 14188 (Sep 10, 2021)

  • A bug has been fixed (monitoring service could crash while processing SNMP v3 traps).

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.3 Build 14182 (Jul 7, 2021)

  • Monitors:
  • SNMP Generic Trap monitors can now be switched to Warning or Problem state based on a trap payload.
  • Third-party tools such as OpenSSL and cURL have been updated to the current versions to improve network security.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.3 Build 14180 (Jun 29, 2021)

  • SNMP Generic Trap monitors can now be switched to Warning or Problem state based on a trap payload.
  • Third-party network tools were updated to the current versions to improve network security.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.3 Build 14150 (Dec 27, 2020)

  • IPHost currently supports Push notifications on Android mobile devices; to make use of them, one should install our free IPHost Mobile appKnowledge Base.
  • Several bug fixes, affecting performance issues, have been introduced.
  • Longer description of changes can be found in release notes.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.2 Build 14141 (Jun 26, 2020)

  • Among significant changes:
  • “Measurements” settings group added to HTTP(S) monitor, to fine tune how the performance (site response time) should be calculated
  • An up-to-date MS SQL driver can be used for MS SQL Database monitor (supporting TLS v1.1 and TLS v1.2)

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 14116 (Dec 18, 2019)

  • Monitors:
  • New setting Make Event Log raw data available in alerts was added to Windows Event Log monitor. If this setting is turned on, then matched events from Windows Event Log are collected into $EventAdditionalDetails variable. One can use $EventAdditionalDetails variable in alert templates – emails, SMS-messages and so on.
  • SNMP and WMI Traffic monitors have been changed to measure instantaneous values. Previously monitors might show traffic flowing through a network interface when there is no traffic on an interface but a lot of traffic was seen some time ago.
  • Monitoring Client:
  • Fixed an issue with incorrect ‘Test’ button response for a prolonged state in “Alerting” tab of Monitor settings.
  • Reporting:
  • Previously the charts available in Report tab might contain wrong polling results for some intervals. Gaps and straight lines might be shown instead of actual polling results. This has been fixed.
  • Installation:
  • Previously the creation of default demonstration set of monitors for local host might fail in case of product installation on very slow or high-loaded machines. This problem has been fixed.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 14047 (Apr 6, 2019)

  • Monitoring database:
  • Improved performance and reduced monitoring database size. This allows you to monitor more resources using the same hardware.
  • IPHost Network Monitor creates now fast backup of monitoring configuration. You can restore your monitoring configuration only, without monitoring results.
  • User interface:
  • Performance optimization: only 1000 latest log records to be displayed in the “Logs” panel when total amount of records exceeds 1000 (remaining records are hidden, but they can be browsed using the link “Show full logs”).
  • Web interface:
  • Improvement of “Current Problems” tab: the current monitor performance is displayed to the right of the monitor name, or the words “Down” and “Warning” if the monitor does not has current performance.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 14034 (Mar 27, 2019)

  • Monitoring database:
  • Improved performance and reduced monitoring database size. This allows you to monitor more resources using the same hardware.
  • IPHost Network Monitor creates now fast backup of monitoring configuration. You can restore your monitoring configuration only, without monitoring results.
  • User interface:
  • Performance optimization: only 1000 latest log records to be displayed in the “Logs” panel when total amount of records exceeds 1000 (remaining records are hidden, but they can be browsed using the link “Show full logs”).
  • Web interface:
  • Improvement of “Current Problems” tab: the current monitor performance is displayed to the right of the monitor name, or the words “Down” and “Warning” if the monitor does not has current performance.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 13744 (Dec 26, 2018)

  • Application and Server Monitoring Templates:
  • Templates can now include attachment files.
  • There’s now an option to mark template’s Match monitor “for network discovery only”.
  • User interface:
  • Now an icon can be assigned to a host or a host group. Hosts inherit host group icon by default, but it may be changed. A number of predefined icons are available for different types of hardware, Operating Systems, or server roles. Besides, you can add and use icons of your choice.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 13330 (Jul 30, 2018)

  • Monitors:
  • Syslog messages monitor has been added. It listens to incoming messages in both old RFC 3164 and new RFC 5424 format (detected automatically). You can fine tune your monitor to listen to specific messages, and react with an event. Syslog monitor behaves similarly to SNMP Generic Trap monitor; they share the “Event timeout” feature that sets monitor to Down when there was no relevant messages within a certain period of time.
  • Windows Event Log has been added. Monitor calculates number of events added to the specified event log channel for specified timeframe, using Windows API. Monitor is available for operating systems starting from Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Event Log monitoring isn’t available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems.
  • FTP monitor now supports 3 more options to secure the connection:
  • “FTPS” – implicit FTP over TLS which usually uses 990 port
  • “FTPES” – explicit FTP over TLS that requires encryption support
  • “FTPES, if available” – explicit FTP connection with non-obligatory TLS support
  • Reports:
  • Starting from this release the “Current” column of “Summary” and “Trends” reports contains exact the same value representation as in Monitor tree. For example, for SNMP Custom monitor with the “Value Change” counter type the “Current” column displays both current state and current value.
  • Client Application and Monitoring Service:
  • When you rename or create a host or a host group, all trailing spaces and line feeds (“n” characters) in its name are stripped out for the sake of convenience and naming consistency.
  • Standard host groups can now be deleted
  • Added option to select multiple SNMP versions in SNMP MIB Browser Configuration. The SNMP MIB Browser will attempt to connect using each of these versions until the connection is successful or all versions are tried.
  • Alerting and Actions:
  • Support for “Send AOL message” and “Send ICQ message” simple actions has been removed due to their end of support and lack of up-to-date documentation. Note: make sure you migrate to other means of notification as these actions will be completely removed by the new installation.
  • Spike Filters:
  • Spike filter now ignores “Unknown” monitor state and checks last “Active” state of a monitor when deciding whether to skip polls. Thus short spikes in performance taking place immediately upon Monitoring Service startup are filtered out and state changes do not occur. For example, “Apache Web Server used by IPHost” application monitors do not change their state to “Down” for a short period right after the Monitoring Service startup and alerts are not executed.
  • On the other hand, if last active state of a monitor before the Monitoring Service restart was already a problem state, then spike filtering is not applied. Monitor enters the same problem state immediately.
  • This approach minimizes amount of false state transitions and alerts and avoids needless spike filtering at the same time.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.1 Build 13063 (Apr 2, 2018)

  • Security:
  • Security settings of software components used by IPHost Network Monitor have been tightened in order to mitigate potential security vulnerabilities:
  • TLS 1.2 is enforced on a communication link between Monitoring Service and Remote Agents; medium and weak strength ciphers are prohibited
  • Apache Web server configuration has been changed: TRACE / TRACK methods prohibited, most statistics from status module are no longer published. Minimum necessary statistics are collected and presented by the IPHost web module itself
  • Templates:
  • Added three templates to monitor Xen Server:
  • XenServer Host
  • XenServer Virtual Machine
  • XenServer Storage Repository
  • Added the template to monitor services of MS Sharepoint Server 2016.
  • Added the template to monitor services of Active Directory Domain Controller on MS Windows Server 2016
  • A template “Apache Web Server used by IPHost” has been updated to fetch basic statistics from IPHost web module rather than from standard status module that has been disabled.
  • Monitors:
  • SNMP Custom monitor now supports counting values of OCTET STRING or floating point number types if they can be converted to integer. You can scale such values using the “Divide returned value by…” setting. For example, you can divide by 0.01 to convert fractions of a whole to percents.
  • Two new monitor types have been added:
  • Python script monitor:
  • Executes a Python script given a script file name and optional command-line parameters. Besides, you can supply input data to the script. If monitor returns zero, its stdout is interpreted as a numeric performance value; otherwise its stderr or stdout (whichever is non-empty) is interpreted as an error message.
  • You can indicate which Python interpreter to use with the help of a global setting defined in Settings > Monitoring. By default, a built-in Python 3.6.4 interpreter is used (also known as “embedded Python”). You need to indicate a custom interpreter if you are still using Windows XP; our built-in Python does not support it.
  • Email Round-Trip monitor
  • This monitor sends an e-mail message to given address using SMTP, checks that it has been delivered using either POP3 or IMAP, and then deletes the message. This way it makes sure that e-mail servers work correctly from user point of view. The monitor returns operation time in milliseconds. For slow servers you might want to extend timeout value for this monitor to 1 minute or more (see State Conditions tab).
  • Email Round-Trip monitor uses Python under the hood, and it is affected by the Python interpreter global setting changes. The script source is under $IphostInstallDir/scripts/email_round_trip; you can adapt it to your needs or implement your own monitors in a similar way.
  • Added new types of monitor dependencies. Now you can configure monitor to be stopped by dependency if other monitor is in the one of the following states:
  • Down
  • Warning
  • Not in Down
  • Not in Warning
  • Not in Ok
  • Support for SOA (Start of Authority) serial number monitoring has been added to DNS monitor. Use DNS Response Validation state condition section to make sure that it matches some “known good” serial number. This way you get notified when someone changes any DNS information for a particular domain.
  • A new “Reverse monitor” option was added to PING, TCP, and HTTP monitors. This option “reverses” the meaning of the monitor. I.e., if this option is set, the monitor is considered OK if the monitor has not received the proper reply during the specified time (the performance value is set to a fake value of 1 ms in that case). If the monitor has received the needed reply, it is considered DOWN. Reversed PING monitors are not taken into account when considering the “Depends on PING on this host” monitor options.
  • HTTP/FTP Return Code Validation section (previously “Accepted Return Codes“) dialog is changed. Now you can use a notation like 4xx in that dialog to specify any return code that starts with digit 4. Besides that, you can also specify a set of exceptional return codes that are NOT accepted.
  • HTTP and FTP Return Code Validation section are now considered distinct sections. This allows to specify different requirements on return codes for HTTP monitors and FTP monitors at the host or a higher level.
  • SNMP custom monitor now displays current value in the monitor tree in the following cases:
  • counter type is “Value Change”
  • there are SNMP Response Validation state conditions for “Current Value” counter type
  • State Conditions:
  • Now state changes that took place while the monitor was Stopped are detected and reported. For example, if you stop some monitor that was in Down state, correct the problem with corresponding resource, and start the monitor, then the state change from Down to OK will be detected and corresponding alerts will be performed, if any. The rationale for this change is to always perform recovery alerts, even if exact moment of state change is hidden by stopping the monitor. Otherwise it is hard to say whether the problem is still in place.
  • Alerting and Actions:
  • A new action type has been added:
  • Python script action:
  • Executes a Python script similarly to the Python script monitor. For example, you can send an e-mail using Python smtplib.
  • Support for the new variables – $LastResult and $LastResultTime – has been added. The variables are available for use in actions.
  • $LastResult – the result of the last poll of a monitor (as in the Last Result column in the tree view tab). If the monitor is DOWN or has never been called, the variable is set to ‘N/A’.
  • $LastResultTime – the time moment of the last poll of a monitor. If the monitor has never been called, the variable has the value of ‘N/A’.
  • HTTPS URL is used when expanding variables for alerts, when HTTPS is available
  • Client Application and Monitoring Service:
  • When a monitor is in the DOWN state, earlier versions of the IPHost Network Monitor considered the
  • performance value for that monitor to be equal to 0 when calculating averages and plotting data.
  • That is not always true in reality, because the DOWN state can be resulted from a failure to satisfy
  • one of imposed state conditions. Now performance values returned by a monitor are taken into account
  • even the monitor is in the DOWN state. Besides, such performance values are displayed
  • in a tree in monitoring client
  • in summary / trends reports in web interface.
  • Support for nested host groups has been added. New Host Group dialog allows to create a host group either as a top-level group for a local or remote agent, or as a sub-group of another group.
  • New Move context menu option has been added. It allows moving hosts and host groups in the main tree. Same action is available in Name and Grouping section of Main Parameters tab. During the creation of a new host you can also select or create a group to place the host into.
  • Reports in IPHost Monitor Web interface can also be structured and viewed by (sub)groups. Only monitors pertaining to a particular group or any of its nested subgroups are shown when you navigate to that group in a tree.
  • View “By dependency” has been added in the IPHost Network Monitor client application and web interface. Now you can view monitor dependency tree with icons indicating dependency type of each dependent monitor.
  • Fixed compatibility issues for Remote Agents released before the beginning of 2017 that might cause Monitoring Service crash or instability.
  • Removed outdated feature that sets the limit of maximum half-opened TCP connections. Old agents are sent a number of 1000 connections for compatibility reasons.
  • Software Components:
  • Third party tools such as Apache HTTP server, OpenSSL, curl and other libraries have been updated to their latest stable released versions.
  • Reports:
  • The user can now control by the “Settings > Reporting” dialog whether the reports generated by the IPHost Network Monitor should contain stopped monitors or monitors that have been discovered but not yet started. The analogous settings are provided also in the web-interface.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.0 Build 12338 (Dec 22, 2017)

  • Monitors:
  • Custom SNMP Trap monitors: SNMP v3 traps are now supported; added to “Other Applications and Services” category
  • Templates:
  • Templates have been added for MS Exchange 2013 application
  • Client Application and Monitoring Service:
  • HTTP(S) monitor now does not report SSL errors for valid site certificates, when “Ignore HTTPS (SSL) errors” option is turned off
  • Improved stability of monitoring service, in case when monitors hang for a very long time
  • Support for the following variables has been added:
  • $WindowsDomain : string
  • $WindowsUser : string
  • $WindowsPassword : string (password as plain text)
  • $UnixUser : string
  • $UnixPassword : string (password as plain text)
  • $UnixAuthType : string, one of ‘password’, ‘key’ or ‘key_or_password’
  • $UnixKeyPath : string (path to private key file)
  • $UnixKeyPassphrase : string
  • $SNMPVersion : string, one of ‘v1’, ‘v2c’ or ‘v3’
  • $SNMPCommunity : string
  • $SNMPv3Authentication : string, one of ‘none’, ‘md5’ or ‘sha1’
  • $SNMPv3User : string
  • $SNMPv3Password : string (password as plain text)
  • $SNMPv3PrivacyProtocol : string, one of ‘none’, ‘des’ or ‘aes’
  • $SNMPv3EncryptionKey : string
  • These variables are available in monitors and actions that use corresponding types of credentials. For example, you can pass `$WindowsDomain`, `$WindowsUser` and `$WindowsPassword` as command-line parameters to the script in Script or Program monitor. This way you reuse credentials defined for IPHost when invoking external scripts/programs and there is just one place to define them.
  • When a variable is undefined or irrelevant for monitor type used, it is not expanded by IPHost.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.0 Build 12221 (Nov 24, 2017)

  • Application Templates: Integration with Application Templates Community site has been introduced; now one can work with application templates (publish, download, provide feedback etc) directly from IPHost Network Monitor GUI client (see “Settings > Community” section).
  • Installation: IPHost Network Monitor main program and Remote Network Agent can now be installed in unattended (batch) mode. That can be convenient if IPHost should be deployed in virtual machines.
  • Monitoring Service: “Script over SSH” action functionality has been restored. Previously this action established SSH connection but did not run the script.
  • Alerting: separate recovery actions can now be specified for escalated problem state (i.e., when monitor stays in problem state considerable time.
  • Dependency on agent’s connected state can now be added to monitors provided by the agent. That can help to reduce amount of alerts when agent gets disconnected for some reason.
  • This release was tested and confirmed to support alerting via popular groupware and messaging platforms: Slack, HipChat, Microsoft Teams, and Telegram. Follow instructions in corresponding KB articles to configure alerts for these platforms.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.0 Build 11530 (Jun 1, 2017)

  • New monitors and application templates:
  • Added VmWare Host, VmWare Virtual Machine, VMWare Datastore monitors and Applications. Use them to check parameters of Host, Virtual Machines, and Datastore on VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
  • Added support for “depend on ping” dependency option.
  • Database:
  • Improved monitoring database backup. Added extra integrity checks when backing up the database.
  • Added an option to perform full database backup at any moment.
  • Multiple backups can be stored now. Backup schedule is configurable through settings.
  • Added a simple way to restore monitoring database from backup.
  • Monitoring Service:
  • Improved discovery for WMI, SNMP, SSH disk space and traffic monitors. Now IPHost service will discover monitors for all disks and network interfaces.
  • SSH (Remote Script or Program) monitor has been improved to support execution of scripts defined in local file or in a “Script body” text box while passing parameters to those scripts. Different interpreters use different rules for passing script parameters in such a case; the following most popular ones were checked:
  • bash, dash, csh, zsh, perl, python, ruby, nodejs, php
  • before this fix, parameters were not recognized by perl, python, ruby and nodejs scripts.
  • Web Interface:
  • Now measurement units are shown on monitor performance charts in cases when different combinations of settings use different units.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 5.0 Build 10689 (May 6, 2016)

  • Application Templates:
  • The main new feature of IPHost Network Monitor version 5.0 is an introduction of application templates. Detailed information on application templates can be found in Help.
  • Web Interface:
  • The web interface has been enhanced to allow generating all types of reports in the JSON format. An additional optional “format” parameter is added to URLs. This parameter can have one of the three values: format=html – report in the HTML format (default) | format=json – report as a human-readable, pretty-printed JSON (with newlines and indentations) | format=compact – report as a minimal size JSON, without meaningless whitespace.
  • Now HTTP Basic or Digest authentication may be applied to the web interface as a whole or only to a part of it. The necessary web server modules were added to IPHost Network Monitor distribution and its configuration files were adjusted in accordance. It’s still possible and preferable to use Access Password to protect web interface as a whole, but now it’s also possible to apply more fine grained access control restrictions via HTTP authentication, allowing certain users to see certain pages only. See http://iphostmonitor.com/kb/how-can-i-allow-access-to-certain-web-interface-pages-only.html for more information.
  • Monitoring service:
  • WMI Process monitor now correctly calculates CPU usage. Previously, negative values or values exceeding 100% might appear.
  • NTLM authentication support in HTTP(S) monitors has been fixed. Previously HTTP 401 error might have been returned for servers using this authentication method.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 4.0 Build 10090 (Oct 29, 2015)

  • NEW FEATURES:
  • From now on, there’s no separate freeware version of IPHost Network Monitor. When installed, IPHost Network Monitor enters a 30-day trial period, with a 500 active monitor limit (any combination of all monitor types). After the trial period ends, the Trial license is automatically converted to Freeware.
  • The Freeware version is limited to 50 active monitors; the following limitations are also in effect:
  • No Remote Network Agents
  • 1 Web Transaction Monitor
  • The following monitor types are not allowed:
  • All SNMP monitor types
  • All Resources — Windows/WMI monitor types (including all WMI monitor types, Disk space, Windows service and File monitor types)
  • The Freeware version never expires.
  • The Basic 200 license:
  • We have also upgraded Basic 100 license — it is now Basic 200 (up to 200 active monitors). The other limitations are the same as for the Freeware version.
  • Alerting has been redesigned:
  • Simple actions with a name assigned such as «Send mail» can be created. Simple actions can be reused by multiple alerts.
  • Alerts can now be composed of a number of simple actions, every one with its optional schedule. Alerts can also be named.
  • Alert rules can now be tested (using the Testing tab on the monitors’ Alerting tabs). An alerting rule is executed unconditionally when tested, testing doesn’t alter the monitor state and produces log records that can be used to debug alerts.
  • A new type of alert («Send HTTP(S) request») has been added, allowing sending a HTTP(S) GET/POST request on a monitor event.
  • The main features of the «Send HTTP(S) request» alert are as follows:
  • Type of request (GET/POST)
  • Proxy settings (HTTP proxy/SOCKS 4/SOCKS 5)
  • HTTP authorization settings
  • User agent settings
  • Response validation (text validation/response code validation)
  • Spike Filtering Redesigned:
  • Spike filters, up to this version, allowed ignoring a single attempt to enter a problem state (Warning or Down). The whole concept of spike filters has been changed in this manner:
  • Per section spike filters can be set (every event that can cause a switch to a problem state can have its own spike filter). For example: a WMI CPU monitor can change state due to Value bounds or Response timeout. Each of these sections, as per state, can have its own spike filter.
  • A common spike filter can be set on the State condition tab: it will be used when none of the section spike filters can be applied (for example, if a host domain name can’t be resolved, or a connection error happens).
  • Spike filters can skip more than 1 attempt to change state, this counter is configurable individually per filter.
  • A spike polling interval can be set for every spike filter: when a spike filter is engaged, that polling interval (defaults to the monitor’s polling interval) is used.
  • BUG FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS:
  • GUI Client:
  • Upon monitor creation for a host with a missing A DNS record, the GUI client might hang until the monitoring service was restarted.
  • Setting inheritance when adding new state condition sections has been improved. Also, we have added the ability to remove inherited state condition sections from children when removing the parent section.
  • When a host was copied, explicitly defined monitor dependency was not updated.
  • The SNMP browser shows a non-empty tree if some OIDs had already been loaded before an SNMP error occurred. Earlier the SNMP browser showed just an empty tree view and an error message.
  • The new Monitor Wizard now always starts without any monitors selected.
  • We have added an option to specify a direct path to the CA certificate (.pem file) when using an SSL connection for a MySQL monitor.
  • We have fixed the import function of MIB files (now the IPHost GUI client does not reset the MIB list after restart).
  • IPHost SNMP MIB Browser changes are given below:
  • Fixed printing of hexadecimal strings.
  • Fixed printing of SNMP enums and units.
  • Fixed size of the MIB import dialog.
  • Certain state conditions sections now show current measurement units (such as percent, Mb) for a selected monitor.
  • We have added the ability to temporarily disable Alerting for all monitors in IPHost Network Monitor Client and Web Interface.
  • Service:
  • Credentials were not properly updated upon an access password change.
  • We have fixed the bug where the GUI client was unexpectedly closed after an upgrade.
  • We have added an event timeout State condition section for the SNMP Generic Trap monitor. This section replaces the response timeout section. It contains a configurable Spike filter to control the permissible number of overdue traps.
  • The Monitoring Service has been fixed to always send a discovery report email, previously it might fail, when a large amount of monitors was found.
  • When switching between monitors in the new Monitor Wizard, the selection was also changed in the monitor Tree View.
  • We have fixed the discovery of PING monitors: discovery might find PING monitors for non-existing hosts.
  • The SNMP Generic Trap monitor has been changed to allow limiting the accepted trap number per a specified time period.
  • IMAP and POP3 monitors now can be discovered even with wrong credentials settings.
  • Web Interface:
  • The default Web server configuration has been updated to enhance Web interface security (especially important in cases when the Web interface is accessible to the general public).
  • Remote Network Agent:
  • We have added the ability to configure system limits (thread count, CPU load, maximum number of half-open TCP connections and Web Transaction processes) on remote agents. This allows controlling remote computer resources utilized by the monitoring service.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 4.0 Build 9250 (May 13, 2015)

  • Monitoring service: Monitoring of virtually any server or networking hardware is now possible – 12 new and improved monitor types for system resource monitoring have been introduced. Now you can monitor CPU load, memory and disk space usage, and parameters of system processes using any of 3 technologies: WMI, SNMP, or SSH.
  • Monitoring interface: New Monitor Wizard has been revamped to cope with an increased number of various monitor types. Now you can create several monitors of different types at a time.
  • Monitoring interface: Credentials management has been considerably improved.
  • Web interface: New product settings for Web Interface have been added. You can enable secure access (via HTTPS), set host name or IP address to access Web Interface, set password and several other parameters.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 4.0 Build 8879 (Apr 18, 2015)

  • MONITORING SERVICE:
  • Now we have added new variables which can be used in alert messages:
  • $AgentName, $AgentNotes, $AgentReportUrl and $AgentMobileReportUrl — contain information about Remote Agent for a current monitor
  • $AlertTime – indicates the time when an alert was issued. It may differ from $Time that indicates when the problem took place. More specifically, it will differ when the alert is performed with some delay relative to the problem or when it is repeated later.
  • CLIENT:
  • The parameter “Notes (in reports)” has been added to the Regular reporting section on the Main parameters tab for Remote Agents.
  • Hosts are now displayed as ‘Hostname (IP)’ or just ‘IP’ (when Hostname is not resolved) in the following places:
  • Main Tree in Monitoring Client
  • Tree By Host in the Web Interface
  • Report Header in the Web Interface
  • Popup Alert text
  • WEB INTERFACE:
  • We have addressed all recently disclosed HTTPS security vulnerabilities by updating the OpenSSL library and httpd.conf configuration file. This change affects the Apache Web server that provides access to the Web Interface in case of using HTTPS. See conf/README.TXT for an explanation how to enable HTTPS access to the Web Interface.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 4.0 Build 8716 (Jan 20, 2015)

  • General Changes:
  • The Default Down State Timeout has been changed from 10 to 20 seconds for all monitors. A default Warning State Time Limit of 10 seconds is introduced. Both thresholds have the spike filtering checkbox enabled to ignore a single threshold violation (a spike). You can change these default thresholds by selecting the All Agents tree node in the Main tree and then editing the parameters on the State conditions tab in Parameters/Results View.
  • The PING monitors now use different thresholds: 5 seconds for Down and 0.5 seconds for Warning (with spike filtering enabled). They also use a different polling interval of 30 seconds rather than one minute used by the other monitors.
  • Monitors discovered or created through the New Monitor Wizard do not issue alerts when they are created in an already “bad” state. This is the initial state of a monitor, not a state change, so it is not considered to be “something bad that has just happened”.
  • False positives have been fixed in the rare cases of PINGing to a disconnected host with a response time exactly matching the timeout, which led to a very small chance of a PING returning success when the host was actually Down.
  • Client:
  • The client GUI application might experience delays when navigating a tree in the main window. The problem could take place when the host where the application was running was not known to the system DNS servers. Now such delays should not occur.
  • Web Transaction Monitor:
  • Web Transaction Monitor is fixed to save the Down state timeout and Warning state time limit recommended by Web Transaction Player. In version 4.0.8652 these limits were ignored and the default thresholds were inherited instead.
  • Web Interface:
  • The mobile version of the web interface, http::8084/nms_mobile/index.html, has been fixed. Previously an attempt to open this URL resulted in an error message about a non-existing file called «form». Now this URL opens a mobile variant of the web UI as it should.
  • A shorter variant of the URL also works now, http::8084/nms_mobile/ (the same is true for nms/ path when using the standard web interface). Paths without a trailing slash do not work in this release yet.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 4.0 Build 8652 (Dec 20, 2014)

  • User Interface:
  • We’ve changed both the Monitoring Client (Windows Interface) and the Web Interface with two main points in mind:
  • providing a clearer view of the system configuration and current system state (better naming, more consistent color scheme and icons, and so on);
  • seamlessly blending it with the look & feel concept of the latest generations of Microsoft Windows.
  • Particular attention has been given to the Windows 8 OS family and support for high DPI displays. Now the main window of the Monitoring Client has a predefined layout with two areas:
  • the tree area that contains monitors organized in the Main view and the other tree views;
  • the Parameters/Results pane containing the report and parameters of a selected tree item.
  • Now you can set configuration for each object on three tabs: Main parameters, State conditions, and Alerting. The Main view contains a tree that defines inheritance hierarchy for most parameters to minimize duplication of settings.
  • Alerting:
  • It is especially important to understand how alerts are produced now. While all the basic ways of alerting (sending an e-mail or an IM message, playing a sound file, running a script, etc.) are still available, the way they are configured has changed:
  • settings that define when monitors enter problem states (Down and Warning) are defined on the State conditions tab and may be inherited;
  • settings that define what alerts should be used when monitors enter the problem states are specified on the Alerting tab and may be inherited, or global named Alerting Rules may be used;
  • each alerting rule defines alerts to be issued when a problem takes place, when it persists for some time (an escalation alert), and when it is over;
  • each such alert is a compound entity that consists of one or more simple alerts, and each of these simple alerts has a schedule attached.
  • For example, you can define an alerting rule for a host that instructs IPHost Network Monitor to issue two alerts when some resource enters the Down state: send an e-mail (scheduled for business hours) and send an SMS (for days off and evenings). Then you can define an escalation alert that does the same in 30 minutes, but this time the CEO address is added to the recipients list.
  • Web Transaction Monitor:
  • The Internet Explorer based web transaction engine has been tested with the latest browser releases and web transaction recorder stability has been improved. The following changes have been implemented as well:
  • Support is added for recording of Ajax POST requests that are often used to perform authentication. This support works when Internet Explorer 10 or newer is in use.
  • The web transaction recorder will now use the same browser compatibility mode settings as those for standalone IE to ensure the same behavior of web pages as in a standalone browser.
  • Third party libraries:
  • We’ve made an upgrade of all third party components of the product including the Firebird database server, Apache web browser, Qt toolkit, and a number of libraries providing specific protocol support. Even the development environment was upgraded to use the latest C++ compiler and Windows SDK

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 8152 (Sep 16, 2014)

  • Now it is possible to filter any incoming SNMP Trap Payload with regular expressions.
  • Logic of network interface selection for traffic monitors in process of network discovery is improved.
  • Traffic monitors now handle correctly the cases:
  • when target host is rebooted;
  • when more than 2Gb of data is passed through the network interface between two consecutive polls.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 7890 (May 13, 2014)

  • Traffic monitors are no longer forcefully re-added for (re)discovery in client GUI. This is done once when upgrading to a version where support for traffic monitors was added, or when installing such a version anew. It is possible to disable (re)discovery of such monitors afterwards.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 7796 (Apr 17, 2014)

  • Fixed timeout on connection shutdown that was detected in rare cases when checking services such as Remote Desktop connectivity using a TCP monitor
  • Traffic monitors now correctly handle network adapter names containing non-ASCII characters

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 7298 (Feb 20, 2014)

  • Eliminated false error message «E-mail sender or recipient or subject or body is not set.» from 'SMS over e-mail' alert or the 'Send mail' alert if e-mail subject field is empty

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 7214 (Feb 20, 2014)

  • At the first installation new WMI Traffic Speed and WMI Traffic Volume monitors are created on the local host in addition to the previous set of the sample monitors
  • IMAP monitor has been fixed to turn to Down if login was unsuccessful

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.5 Build 6985 (Jan 10, 2014)

  • Monitoring:
  • New monitor types are now supported
  • SNMP Traffic Speed - for monitoring the current bandwidth usage of a network interface. You can monitor inbound/outbound/total traffic speed. The monitor is SNMP-based.
  • SNMP Traffic Volume - for monitoring of the traffic volume transferred for a period of time via a network interface. The monitor is SNMP-based.
  • WMI Traffic Speed - for monitoring the inbound/outbound/total speed of traffic that goes via a network card. The monitor is WMI-based.
  • WMI Traffic Volume - for monitoring of the traffic volume transferred for a period of time via a network card. The monitor is WMI-based.
  • Alerting:
  • Automatic discovery of network traffic monitors is supported.
  • Windows interface:
  • User can select time units to set the polling interval (seconds, minutes, hours).
  • Other:
  • A backup copy of the monitoring database (monitors and monitoring results) is now created prior to upgrading installation.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 6645 (Jun 3, 2013)

  • Monitoring:
  • Web Transaction Monitor is based now upon Internet Explorer engine to improve compatibility with various web sites and other web applications.
  • Added support for internationalized domain names.
  • Added option «User Agent» for HTTP(S) monitors.
  • HTTP(S) monitors now also support Icecast and SHOUTcast protocols.
  • New mechanism of asynchronous domain names resolution results in better program performance and reduced network traffic.
  • Discovery: Added «Poll monitors using DNS Name» option to Discovery Wizard. It's useful for DHCP networks that should be polled by DNS name instead of IP address.
  • Windows interface: Global Settings dialog has been compacted to fit small notebooks screens.
  • Alerting: Added option to perform alerts periodically when monitor remains in PROBLEM state.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 6258 (Jul 12, 2012)

  • Some 100 MIB files that allows monitoring of Cisco and HP devices are added to the product.
  • LOGIN SMTP Authentication method is now supported.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 6249 (Jul 12, 2012)

  • Group operations with monitors and hosts are introduced. Now user can copy, delete, start, stop, and poll any selected monitors and hosts at once.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 5909 (Jul 12, 2012)

  • Maintenance release. Several bugs fixed plus upgrade of Firebird database.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 5571 (Jul 12, 2012)

  • Substantial improvements in overall performance of IPHost Network Monitor. Now one copy of the software can support monitoring of about 2,000 resources on standard computer and up to 5,000 monitors on a more recent hardware depending on a monitoring configuration.
  • A set of usability improvements in the user interface application.

New in IPHost Network Monitor Free Edition 3.1 Build 4975 (Jul 12, 2012)

  • Support for SNMP traps. New "SNMP Generic Trap" monitor allows receiving both generic and any vendor specific trap and execute alert upon the trap receipt.
  • Web Transaction monitor now uses correct "Referer" headers in HTTP requests. Now Web Transaction monitor is able to correctly replay the scenarios which include web application login operation on some ASP.NET websites which were not supported before.
  • Now it is possible to set polling interval less than 15 seconds (up to 1 second). Such a short polling intervals must be used with a caution because too frequent polls may lead to network congestion or system slowness.
  • Summary report for HTTP(S) monitor now contains link to monitored URL. This allows user to check monitored URL in a new browser window.