IT Pro Tuesday #159

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

We're also asking for your favorite tips and free 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 Tutorial

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical Networking – But Were Afraid to Ask is a nice tutorial that touches on every area related to fiber in order to provide a basic understanding of how and why these networks function. Covers topics from the day-to-day to the advanced. TheTechnicalBoy explains, "20+ years of networking and I still refer to this all the time."

A Training Resource

dn42 is  a large, dynamic VPN that uses various internet technologies (BGP, whois database, DNS etc.) where you can learn networking and experiment with routing. Gives you an opportunity to build your understanding of routing technologies risk-free using a reasonably large network. roundbacon recommends it for those who "want some practical experience with BGP."

A Free Tool

ScreenToGif is an open-source tool for recording your screen, webcam feed or sketchboard drawings. The integrated editor allows you to edit recordings to adjust individual frames in assorted ways and add overlays. Exports to gif, apng, video, project, images and psd.

Another Free Tool

Remote Utilities is a secure, configurable remote desktop tool for viewing screens, sending keystrokes, controlling the mouse, transferring files and more. A free license allows you to control up to 10 remote PCs. pturpie explains, "I've been using it a few weeks and it seems pretty good. There is a free license available, though the link [included here] is tricky to find."

Another Tutorial

Developing NetBox Plugins is a series of how-tos on creating small, self-contained applications that can add new functionality to Netbox—extending as far as creating full-fledged apps. Plugins can access existing objects and functions of NetBox and use any libraries, external resources and API calls. Kindly suggested by ttl255.

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

DNSdumpster is a domain recon and research tool that can discover hosts related to any domain. Enables you to assess your security by locating which hosts are visible to attackers. Thanks for the suggestion go to MattF.

Disk2vhd is a utility to create a VHD version of physical disks for use in Virtual PC or Hyper-V VMs. Unlike other such tools, Disk2vhd can be used on a system that’s online. MrMoo52 appreciates that “you can then mount the vhd in disk manager just like any other HDD and give it a drive letter."

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