PingLogger

Version 3

Download the latest release from Here
ClickOnce version availble from Here

Running Requirements

Now cross-platform. Binaries only issued for Windows
Windows binaries are fully self-contained and do not require .NET Core 5.0 to be installed prior.

Features

• Offers several distribution methods
  • ClickOnce application for Windows easy install/deployment. Get it here
  • Windows Installer that defaults to C:\PingLogger. Smaller download, and allows for easy removal.
  • Single File (unfortunately is 4 files distributed from a single zip) that can run anywhere.
• Allows for many simultaneous hosts to be logged at one time.
  • Only limit is your network capabilities.
  • Verifies that the host exists before starting.
• Extremely flexible
  • Change your timeout, packet size, ping interval, or warning threshold.
  • Great for power users.
• Can start on demand, or with OS logon.
• Interface adapts to users dark/light mode presences in Windows.

Help!!

Unsure of what something does?

• 
  • This is where you input the name or IP address of the remote host that you want to ping.
  • This includes local area network hosts.
• 
  • You can't edit this field. It is populated by the program with the IP address of what is input above.
  • In this example, 172.217.6.14 is the IP address for google.com.
• 
  • This is where you specify how long (in milliseconds) to wait in between pings. This is regardless of Timeout!
  • If your timeout is longer than your interval, the responses can appear out of order!
• 
  • This is where you specify the response time at which you consider it to be a little too long, but not long enough to be a timeout.
  • This can help you find network slowdowns. So if something is supposed to respond in 10-15ms, but you're getting over 100ms, then it's considered a warning, and is marked as such in the logs.
• 
  • This is where you specify how long you want to wait before considering a ping to be dropped, or timed out.
  • *Caveat: If you set this less than ~500ms, the application can still receive the ping back, but it will still be marked timed out!
• 
  • This should only be changed if you know what you're doing
  • You can specify the size of the ICMP packet that gets sent.
  • This has a hard cap of 64kb. This is a limitation of the protocol, not the application.
  • If you increase this, your packet can and WILL be fragmented, and this will be noted in the logs as a warning.
• 
  • Click this to expand the Ping Response Box which gives a trimmed down view of the logs as the pinger is running.
  • Click it again to collapse it back down. This state is saved between application start and stop.
  • 
• 
  • Clicking this will open a new window that will allow you to watch the full log file in real time for that host.
  • Button will only show if a log exists for that host and the current day.
  • 
• 
  • This opens the logs folder for the current host.
  • For example, if the PingLogger is under C:\PingLogger and the host was google.com, it would open a file explorer to C:\PingLogger\Logs\google.com\
• 
  • This simply sets the warnings, timeouts, total number of pings, and average ping counters all back to 0, in case you make a change to one of the options and want to get a fresh reading.

Options

• 
  • On by default, if this is checked, the program will check GitHub for the latest version and download it
  • If you used the installer, it will download the newest installer and run it silently.
  • If you chose to go with the single file, it will rename the current exe download the newest single-file executable.
  • Both options will clean up any downloaded/renamed files afterwards
• 
  • If this is checked, all hosts will start as the program loads up, so you don't have to do it manually.
• 
  • If you check this, it will create a shortcut in the Start Up folder of the start menu that causes it to load on Windows login.
• 
  • This option, which is only visible & applicable when the above Load With Windows option is checked, will cause the application to start in a minimized state.
• 
  • The rolling number of days to keep log files. Defaults to 7 days.
• 
  • 3 options: Auto, Dark, and Light.
  • Auto will pick a theme based on your Windows settings.
• 
  • Use these buttons to start or stop all of the loggers at the same time.

Trace Route

There is a built-in trace route utility that will help you diagnose issues with timeouts and high latency.
It's similar to the TRACERT command in Windows Click here to find out more info about TRACERT This function is only available to Windows users due to the lack of TTL returned back from the Ping library in other OS's

• Access it by clicking the Run Trace Route button
• In the new window, click Run Trace to see the hops that are being taken to reach the destination.
  • 
• It will do a quick normal ping, then start tracing through the hops.
• Clicking the small plus sign will add that host/IP to the main window so that you can start logging pings against that as well.

Developer Requirements

• Visual Studio 2019 or newer (VS Code may work - not tested!)
• .NET 5.0 SDK

Credits

• theunrepentantgeek https://github.com/theunrepentantgeek/Markdown.XAML
• ScottPlot https://github.com/swharden/ScottPlot