Network Monitor 3.0 released (Free!!!!)

My favorite 'swiss army knife' utility for troubleshooting problems is the Microsoft Network Monitor. (Or Ethereal). I install NetMon on every server that I deploy. Microsoft has just released Network Monitor v3.0! And it is free, no more having to own a copy of SMS or running it only from Windows servers.

Thanks to an excellent protocol analysis class from Bill Alderson from Pine Mountain Group using a Sniffer and then 2 days of intense Microsoft protocol analysis back in 1996 from Paul Adare, I know enough to know I know nothing. But, I can still track down some really tricky problems.

From the Network Monitor Blog, here is a feature list:

• A completely new user interface
• Real time capture and display of frames
• Simultaneous capture on multiple network adapters
• Multiple simultaneous capture sessions
• Network conversations and a tree view displaying frames by conversation
• A new script-based protocol parser language, and script-based parsers
• Support for Vista/Windows XP/Windows Server 2003
• Support for 32bit and 64bit platforms