IT Pro Tuesday #138

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

This week, we're asking for your favorite tools and resources we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

As always, we’re updating the full, searchable list on our website here. Enjoy.

But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.

A Free Tool

The Dude is a network monitor designed to improve the way you manage your network environment. It automatically scans all devices within specified subnets, maps the networks, monitors services and alerts you to problems. Allows you to mass upgrade RouterOS devices and configure them, run network monitoring tools and more. Kindly suggested by yashau.

A Blog

Lessons in Tech offers a series of well-written, detailed how-tos that explain assorted web, security and networking topics. Includes lots of example code and images for enhanced clarity. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to DarkAlman.

Another Free Tool

vRIN is a VM appliance that can inject a large number of routes into a network, with routing, load test and GNS3. Generates /32 IPv4 and /128 IPv6 static routes and redistributes them into the selected routing protocol(s). Supports BGP (IPv4/6), OSPF, OSPFv3, RIPv2 and RIPng. onyx9 appreciates it as "a small VM with an easy-to-use interface to inject as much routes as you like."

A Tip

An engineering suggestion from PeakSufficient2839:

"Setup your favorite terminal program to log EVERY session. Make a folder, put it somewhere you'll remember, and log all your sessions into it. I called mine ‘Sessions’ and put it on my desktop. This works wonderfully for tracking config changes, remembering CLI commands, ‘show’ commands from weeks ago etc. I've come back to files over and over again, finding relevant info from previous events. Totally worth it."

One More Free Tool

Policy Analyzer for analyzing and comparing sets of Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to highlight redundant settings, internal inconsistencies or differences between versions or sets of Group Policies. Can compare GPOs against current local policy and registry settings. rroodenburg explains… "Maybe it’s not user friendly, but it’s a very good tool for comparing policies! You can export results to Excel as well."

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

ONLYOFFICE is an open-source office and productivity suite that includes viewers and editors for text, spreadsheets and presentations. It is fully compatible with Office Open XML formats. SgtKashim describes it as an "[o]nline 'O365'-like product, [that] includes some project management and CRM stuff as well."

MemTest86 is a comprehensive, standalone memory tester for x86 and ARM computers. It boots from a USB flash drive and checks for faults using a set of algorithms and test patterns that have been in development for over 20 years. S1mpel tells us, "In my current job, I always carry a stick with memtest86 and one with the current Windows 10 image around. Both come in handy pretty often."

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.