Net.Medic Freeware Net Diagnostics at Your Fingertips Forrest Stroud
While the panels alone reveal more information about your internet connection than you'll find anywhere else, Net.Medic's value as a diagnostic tool certainly doesn't end there. Two other major capabilities round out the scope of Net.Medic's set of features. The first is Net.Medic's logging options — the program automatically keeps a log of health-related problems as well as a log of connections made with your internet provider. Both logs provide insight into minor and severe problems encountered during your current and previous sessions. Clicking on an individual problem will present the same diagnosis and prescription screen that is encountered when clicking on one of the alerts for a Net.Medic panel.
The other major feature, Net.Medic's reporting capabilities, provides some of the program's most critical information. Of Net.Medic's six available reports, the two that are most relevant are the Health Summary and the Traffic reports. The Health Summary provides a pie graph that depicts the areas in which most major problems occur. The percentages are split accordingly among the desktop, modem, ISP, intranet, internet, and remote server segments of your 'net connection. Typically, problems most often arise with the remote server.
The Traffic Report reveals the average level of traffic per hour for your internet provider and for the internet in general. You can use this report to determine when to avoid peak times of use. In order to get an accurate reading for this and other reports, you will need to first use Net.Medic for an extended period of time so that the program can develop a consistent traffic pattern for your provider and the 'net.
Now that Net.Medic can be downloaded and used for free (as of March 1, 2000), the client serves as a handy and helpful diagnostic tool for any 'net user that has ever experienced the frustration of waiting an eternity for a Web page to finish downloading. If you fit into this category (and most of us do), take heart that your time will be well spent in downloading Net.Medic to help alleviate this aggravating and extremely common problem.
Update: While still available as freeware, Net.Medic is no longer being developed or supported by VitalSigns, which has since been acquired by Lucent Technologies.
Pros: Excellent 'net diagnostic tools, attractive and intuitive interface, easy to use
Cons: Needs a user tutorial, better help documentation, and a traceroute utility; no longer developed or supported; still works great, but with somewhat outdated feature-set (no updates in 5+ years)
