Big Brother is a program designed to monitor your IP-network activities. it gives you a comprehensive picture of what happened to any point on the Net that you put in. Just add this point by specifying it's IP address or hostname and optional short description (for your information only).

The hosts are organized into a hierarchical tree so that you may configure your network picture according to your needs and imagination. Most of the father host properties are inherited by his children unless you wish to specify child's settings explicitly.

Every specified period of time Big Brother will send echo request to every host. And wait for response for at most specified timeout.

Results are presented in a graphical form in the lower pane. Each line of the lower window is related to specific host which is shown on the tooltip when you move your mouse over the graphics. Host activities are also logged into file.

Your current preferences and network tree are automatically saved on Windows shutdown (unless specified otherwise) and may be autosaved every specified amount of minutes. Most recently used file is automatically loaded at Big Brother's startup unless you don't want it.

You can also hide Big Brother into your notify tray so that it won't occupy more than 16x16 square of your precious windows' desktop. Just click in your notify tray or select View/Main Window from menu. Click again to restore Big Brother to its full size.

Enjoy!

Using Big Brother consists of two parts - designing your network tree and monitoring it's activity. The latter takes no effort of yours.

To design the network layout is to put your hosts into Network Tree pane. To add a child host to the current just press insert or Select Brothers/Add child from menu. To add a brother of the current host select Brothers/Add brother from menu. (note: You can't add brother to the root node)

You may also show properties dialog box by selecting View/Host Properties menu. Properties dialog box also pops up automatically whenever you press Enter in the tree view pane.

Monitoring your network activities is even easier. You just relax and watch the screen (or listen to your speakers if you have ones). Network activities are reflected using the lower host activity pane and icons in the tree view. The possible states of the host are:

• Network - you haven't specified host name or ip address for this host. The only reason that makes sense is that you probably want to use this node as a father for family of hosts.
• In progress - checking of this host is in progress.
• Reachable host - this host is reachable and you have no reason to worry about it.
• Worrisome host - this host was reported as unreachable, but less than for specified retries times.
• Unreachable host - this host is known as unreachable for a long time. Whenever the host enters or leaves this state specified actions are taken.

Lower pane shows a histogram of response times for a specified amount of time. Histograms are shown for current host and it's descendants. Hidden (collapsed) children are not shown in activity pane. When you move your mouse over histogram tooltip shows the host name and host address for the corresponding host. If you also hold left mouse button or Ctrl key it will also show you the time corresponding to the point you point at. If you hold Shift key it will also show the Round Trip Time.

Histogram shows the Round Trip Time in the following colours:

• Host's response time is less than 1/3 of the specified timeout.
• Host's response time is more than 1/3, but less then 2/3 of the specified timeout.
• Host's response time is more than 2/3 of the specified timeout.

The Preferences dialog box allows you to change global system preferences which are:

• On windows shutdown save without confirmation - you may specify how does Big Brother act on windows shutdown, whether to save current tree without a confirmation or not.
• Autosave - the interval at wich Big Brother will save current tree automatically. Specify 0 if you don't want to use this feature.
• Ping data packet size - the size of echo request packet in bytes.
• Ping .. hosts simultaneously - number of hosts to ping at a time. If you have a big network to monitor and have a slow computer or connection, you may want to limit number of hosts to ping simultaneously.
• Log to file - Here is where you specify the name of the file to log hosts activities to.
• Show last .. minutes in activity pane - This is the time length of your graphical pane window.
• Store activity pane data - This lets you specify where to store activity pane data when saving file or not.

You can add new host into your network using this menu command. New host will be the child to current.

You may specify whether you want Big Brother to load most recently used file at the startup or not.

Using action tab of host properties dialog box you may specify the actions to be taken whenever host changes its state from up to down and vice versa.

• Override action - You may specify if you want this host to specify some specific actions to take or if you want it to act as it's parent does.
• Going down - Actions to take whenever host goes down (is known as unreachable for retries times in a row). See below for details.
• Going up - Actions to take whenever host becomes reachable after it is considered to be down.

Possible actions are:

This command lets you temporarily disable monitoring of hosts. Big Brother will just sit and wait until you let him do his work.

Settings tab of Host Properties dialog box lets you specify the following:

• Ping intervals - check this if you want to specify intervals for this host explicitly. If you don't - this host will use parent's settings. You can't uncheck this for root node.
  • When the host is known as reachable - time to wait until next ping if the last ping succeeded.
  • When the host is known as unreachable - time to wait until next ping If the last ping failed.
• Maximum ping reply timeout - amount of milliseconds to wait for echo reply.
• Maximum retries count - number of failed pings before Big Brother considers the host is down.

Save your current network layout to disk file for future retrieval

Save your current network layout under different name.

Leave Big Brother. you will be prompted if you have unsaved information.

Use this command to hide or show toolbar.

Use this command to hide or show status bar.

Adjust position of splitter between tree view pane and host activity pane

Show help topics.

The menu commands right before the Exit allows you to quickly retrieve one of the most recently used files.

Big Brother activity indicator is a small red triangle spinning and turning to black whenever Big Brother is busy pinging hosts.

Sometimes you may see some useful messages in there. For instance, long descriptions of menu items whenever you are exploring the menu.

Move mouse cursor with question mark wherever you want and get help for something you click on.

This option will maximize Big Brother window to full screen.

This option will let you move Big Brother window around the screen.

This option will let you resize Big Brother's window

You option may use this to restore Big Brother's window to its original size after you've maximized it.

This option does about the same as the Exit menu command does.

You may add new hosts for monitoring in two ways - by adding it as a child or as a brother to current one.

Tree view pane:

• Network - no particular host specified.
• In progress - host is being checked.
• Reachable host - host is reachable.
• Worrisome host - host is dying.
• Unreachable host - host is unreachable.

Activity pane:

• Good response time
• Average response time
• Critical response time