IT Pro Tuesday #146
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
This week, we're asking for your favorite tools 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
ipcalc is a simple way to calculate the broadcast, network, Cisco wildcard mask and host range for any IP address/netmask—presenting the subnetting results in easy-to-understand binary values. cool-nerd suggests it "if you do a lot of network stuff. I've had it for years as a favorite. I'm sure there's fancy new ones out there, but for some reason I keep using it."
A Blog
PrajwalDesai.com is the place where the author—a Microsoft MVP and server technology expert—shares his knowledge and helpful technical information. You'll find lots of posts and videos on SCCM, LYNC, Exchange and more, with detailed explanations including screenshots when appropriate to make solutions easier to deploy. narpoleptic suggests it as a good resource "for Configuration Manager/SCCM stuff."
Another Free Tool
TortoiseGIT is an open-source Windows Shell Interface to Git that offers overlay icons showing the file status, a powerful context menu for Git and more. Works with whatever development tools you like and with any type of file. The primary means of interaction with TortoiseGit is through the context menu of Windows Explorer. Our thanks go to The-Dark-Jedi for this one.
A List
Awesome Network Automation is a curated list of fantastic network automation resources that is a real treasure trove for anyone looking for a convenient way to find useful information on network automation. Kindly suggested by onefst250r.
One More Free Tool
IPinfo allows you to quickly pinpoint user locations, customize their experiences, prevent fraud, ensure compliance and more. PrettyBigChief explains: "It responds to invoke-webrequest with info about your IP."
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
Napalm provides a vendor neutral, cross-platform unified API to network devices. Since the configuration and management of network devices differs by vendor and platform, Napalm aims to make things simpler with a consistent API you can use across network devices from various vendors. This open-source solution works with all the most-popular automation frameworks. Our appreciation for this recommendation goes to packet_whisperer.
Squid is a caching proxy for the Web that supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and more to reduce bandwidth and improve response times. It can route content requests to servers in a wide variety of ways to build cache server hierarchies that optimize network throughput. Offers extensive access controls and runs on most available operating systems. YourBrainOnJazz explains, "Squid is not only a proxy, it also is an in-memory cache and has load balancing capabilities... Squid is used by companies, CDN's and ISP's around the world, legally, to help optimize delivery of content to consumers more efficiently and quickly."
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.