In order to connect, maintain, troubleshoot and do security audits on networking appliances, there are a few applications that every network engineer should have in his bag of tricks.
At a bare minimum you should have applications that will support the following:
- Telnet client
- SSH client
- Serial Connections
- FTP (Client and Server)
- TFTP Server
- SYSLOG
- Configuration comparison utilities
- Port Scanner
- IP subnet calculator
Below we have selected the best free applications that will get all the above done with minimal fuss and maximum features.
PUTTY
By far one of the most widely used applications for connecting to Routers and Switches. It supports Raw, Telnet, Rlogin, SSH, and Serial connections. It is very customisable to give you the best look and feel for you needs and supports Proxy server connections.
3CDaemon
This applications includes: FTP (client and server), TFTP Server and Sysolg Server. All servers can run at the same time and the easy to use interface makes it quick to change between servers and configure all options.
SuperPort Scanner
This port scanner supports scanning of subnets through ping sweeps, hostname lookups, port scanning and the scan speed can be adjusted.
IP Subnet Calculator
The quick and easy way to work out subnets.
Kdiff3
With this application you can import 2 or 3 different text documents for comparison. It highlights all differences between the files one line at a time and even highlights individual characters that differ. Great for configuration comparisons!
CLISA
This program was written for our own personal use, but we are giving it away for free for all to use. CLISA (CLI Syslog Analyser for PIX) is a Cisco PIX Firewall Syslog Analyser that is designed to run on Windows platforms. It is currrently designed to identify all blocks (Deny statements) in the Syslog file to make troublesooting easier when dealing with large firewalls with thousands of Access-lists. With Summary and Full Reports based on queries using any or all of the 3 most important IP parameters (Source IP, Destination IP and Port). Also supports e-mailing of reports, and saving reports.