About Dipstick

Dipstick is our award-winning freeware that allows you to evaluate mirror sites to figure out which one has currently the least traffic.

Enjoy!

What's New Change of license and opening the source. Minor cosmetic changes Now works properly with Winsock 2 for Windows95. Also may start working with non-Microsoft TCP/IP stacks. Fixed bug that caused GPF when removing all URLs after testing is over and you picked the URL of your choice. Ability to export/import sets of URLs. Copy URL menu command in the Main Window and button in the Best URL window. Multiple URLs dragging or pasting. Works only for MSIE4 browser. Annoying ToolTips removed. Drag'n'drop source added to the Best URL window. Completed/Total URLs counter added to Dipstick drag pad. You may now drag'n'drop URLs from main Dipstick dialog window. Added ability to paste URLs into Dipstick instead of dropping. New install program now lets you install Dipstick to the location of your choice. Resizable main Dipstick dialog window. Come up with the best URL automatically. Workaround for redir.dll No more MSIE 3.0 requirement. Remembers window positions and size as well as columns widths. When manually adding locations - you may specify the URL, not host name as it was before (I still wonder how it came to my mind) Using Dipstick

To use Dipstick, please follow these steps:

Load the page that contains links into your MSIE or Netscape browser.
Drag'n'drop desired links to Dipstick window.
(Optional) you can also manually add as many links as you want by selecting Manual Ping option. You can enter url, hostname or IP address there.

You will see rain going thought Dipstick window. After the rain stops, Dipstick will show you results either by suggesting the best URL or by sorting results in a table (which can be viewed by clicking on Dipstick window).

After you are done, you can reping all selected URLs by clicking Reping All button in Dipstick window.

Small note for newbies (all others, please do not get mad): To drag'n'drop the URL, you need to move your mouse to the link on the web page, press and hold the select (usually - left) mouse button, and drag the mouse (with the selected URL to Dipstick window and then release mouse button. Main Window

The main window consists of -

Brilliant ListView with the following columns:
Host Name - host name as it was specified in the URL or resolved from IP address.
Host IP address - host IP address as it was specified in the URL or resolved from host name.
Min RTT - Minimum Round Trip Time. Dipstick sends a few echo requests to remote host and calculates minimum, maximum, and average Round Trip Times. The less the better.
Avg RTT - Average Round Trip Time. About the same meaning as in Min RTT, but this is the average one. The less the better. By default locations are sorted by Avg RTT.
Max RTT - Maximum Round Trip Time. About the same meaning as in Min RTT and Avg RTT, but this is maximum one. The less the better.
Pktloss - Percentage of the requests lost somewhere in the net. The less the better.
Buttons:
Manual Ping - lets you add location manually (usually you just drag'n'drop locations into Dipstick window.

Reping - Test selected location again.

Reping All - Test again all locations in the list.

Remove - Remove selected location from the list.

Remove All - Remove all locations from the list.

Help - I think you have a clue on what this button does.

Options - Set Dipstick options

Exit Dipstick - Close Dipstick program

Dipstick Opions

Options are:

Number of pings per host - number of echo requests to send for each location.

Maximum number of threads - number of locations to process at the same time. adjust this if you have unusually fast or slow connection and/or computer.

Ping Timeout - number of seconds to wait between sending echo requests.

Interval between pings - number of seconds to wait between sending echo requests.

Ping size - number of bytes to send in each echo request.

Test innermost URL - in case of nesting redired URLs test the innermost one. Some strange companies refer to their mirrors using redir.dll so that the URLs for files located on different machines look like they're all here. Like http://www.punchcards.com/redir.dll?target=http://www.punchcards.mirrordudes.com/file.exe&puchcards=advanced

Come up with the best URL - pop up with a suggestion about the best URL (after all locations have been pinged and have nothing left to do other than to start dowloading).

URL Properties

URL Properties are:

URL - the URL itself if present.

Host name - host name as specified in URL (or the innermost URL in case of redired URLs in the appropriate option is turned on or resolved by Dipstick.
Ping times - minimum, average, and mmaximum round trip times if available.
Packet loss - percentage of packets lost in transmission.
Status - description of last error occured (if any).

Select URLs dialog

If you're dragging or cut'n'pasting selection from MSIE4 browser, you're supposed to chose which URLs to test.

There are two options you may want to change when selecting URLs from list:

Smart adjust selection - let Dipstick adjust current selection when you're clicking URL based on the URL you click.
Adjusst by innermost URL - use the innermost URL when adjusting selection.

The default values for these options are also available from the Options dialog box.

Dipstick report

When Dipstick has finished testing and there's nothing left but to start your download, you're presented with a suggestion about the best URL. From this dialog you may chose to browse to the location you like using Previous Location and Next Location buttons, Open this URL, Copy URL to clipboard or drag it to wherever you want.