IP Monitoring Tool

IP Monitoring Tool User Guide

IP Monitoring Tool keeps an eye on your websites, servers and network devices. It checks each one on a schedule you set and tells you when something stops responding, recovers, changes or starts to look unhealthy. This guide walks through every feature of the program, from your first monitor to alerts, scripts and troubleshooting.

Contents

1. Getting started in five steps
2. Choosing a monitor type
3. Creating and changing a monitor
4. Adding a long list of addresses
5. Reading the main window
6. Running checks and continuous monitoring
7. How you are alerted
8. Reviewing what changed on a page
9. The event log
10. Program settings
11. Running in the notification area
12. Menu commands and keyboard shortcuts
13. Exporting, printing and copying
14. Moving from URL Monitoring Tool 2.x
15. Solving common problems
16. Requirements, files and licensing

1. Getting started in five steps

1. Press Add on the toolbar (or the Insert key). Type a web address such as https://www.example.com/, a host name or an IP address, pick a monitor type and confirm with OK. A URL already on the clipboard is entered for you.
2. Do the same for each site or server you care about. Have a long list? File > Add Multiple URLs lets you paste them all at once.
3. Press Check Now to run every monitor once. The Status column reports Up, Down, Changed or Warning.
4. Press Start. From now on each monitor runs at its own interval – even when the window is tucked away in the notification area.
5. Open Settings and decide how you want to hear about problems: notifications, sounds or a script.

2. Choosing a monitor type

Every monitor tests one thing. Pick the type that matches the question you want answered:

Which one should I use?

• Is my site online? – Web page.
• Does the page show what it should? – Keyword. Require your company name to be present, or make sure a message like “Database error” never appears.
• Has a page been updated? – Content change.
• Is a router, server or other device reachable? – Ping.
• Is my mail, FTP, SSH, database or Remote Desktop service accepting connections? – TCP port.
• Did someone change where my domain points? – DNS.

3. Creating and changing a monitor

To create a monitor press Add (Insert). To change one, select it and press Edit, hit Enter, or double-click the row. Edit > Duplicate makes a copy you can adjust – handy for watching another port on the same server.

General fields

Options for web pages and servers

Options for page content

Before saving, press Test Now to try the monitor with its current settings. The result and response time appear next to the button.

4. Adding a long list of addresses

• Paste a list – File > Add Multiple URLs accepts URLs or host names one per line; spaces, commas and semicolons work as separators too. Choose a monitor type and an interval in minutes. Anything already in the list is skipped.
• Import a file – File > Import URL List reads a plain text file with one address per line, or a CSV file exported from IP Monitoring Tool.
• Drag and drop – drop text files or Internet shortcuts (.url) onto the window. To make a shortcut, drag the address from your browser’s address bar onto the desktop.

5. Reading the main window

Each row of the upper list is one monitor. Click a column heading to sort by it, or drag a heading to move the column. The program remembers your column widths and order.

Drag the splitter between the list and the event log to resize them; View > Event Log hides the log. The status bar tells you whether monitoring is running, when the next check is due, how many monitors are up, down, changed or in warning, and when the last check ran. Problems also show in the window title and on the taskbar button – for example “IP Monitoring Tool - 2 DOWN”.

6. Running checks and continuous monitoring

• Check Now (Ctrl+F5) runs every monitor right away. Action > Check Selected Now (F5) runs only the selected ones.
• Start turns on continuous monitoring, with each enabled monitor running at its own interval. Stop turns it off. To begin automatically, tick “Start monitoring when the program starts” in Settings.
• Edit > Pause / Resume suspends or resumes the selected monitors.
• Checks run side by side – 8 at once by default and up to 32 – so one slow server never holds up the rest.
• Action > Open in Browser opens the selected page in your default browser.

7. How you are alerted

An alert is raised when a monitor goes down, when it recovers, when page content or DNS addresses change, and – if you want – for warnings such as slow responses or a certificate close to expiry. Pick your alerts under Settings > Alerts:

• Windows notifications – a pop-up in the corner of the screen that also stays in the notification center. Several simultaneous events are grouped into one notification. Clicking it opens the program with the monitor selected. Use Test Notification to preview it. If nothing appears, make sure notifications are enabled in Windows Settings > System > Notifications and that Focus assist / Do not disturb is off.
• Play sound – the default Windows sound, or a WAV file chosen with the “…” button.
• Bring the window to the front whenever a monitor goes down or changes.
• Run program – starts a program or script and passes details of the event to it. Use it to send an e-mail or chat message, restart a service or write your own log.

Placeholders for Run program

Example command line:

C:\Scripts\alert.cmd "%NAME%" "%EVENT%" "%DETAILS%"

8. Reviewing what changed on a page

A content change monitor keeps the text of the two most recent versions of the page. When the text changes, the monitor stays Changed until you have looked at it. Select the monitor and press Changes on the toolbar – or double-click it – to open the Changes window. Added and removed lines are highlighted, and a summary tells you how many lines were added and removed and when the change was found. Untick Show only changed lines to read the full page text.

• Open Page shows the page in your browser.
• Mark as Seen sets the monitor back to Up, ready to report the next change. Action > Mark All Changes as Seen clears every monitor at once.
• Getting a change on every check because of counters, dates or ads? Turn on Compare visible text only and Ignore numbers for that monitor.

DNS monitors behave the same way: the first check saves the host’s IP addresses, and any later difference in that set triggers an alert.

9. The event log

New events are added at the top of the log with the time, the monitor, what happened and the details. Logged events include program start, monitoring started or stopped, Up, Down, Back up, Content changed, DNS addresses changed, Warning and Change marked as seen. Double-click an event to jump to its monitor. Right-click the log to Copy the selected entries, Save Event Log as CSV, or Clear Event Log.

For a permanent record, tick “Write events to a log file” in Settings; Open Log shows the file. It is stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\IP Monitoring Tool and rotated automatically once it gets large.

10. Program settings

Open them with Settings on the toolbar or Tools > Settings.

Monitoring

Alerts

Window

11. Running in the notification area

With taskbar mode on, closing or minimizing the window doesn’t stop anything – the program carries on from the notification area beside the clock. The color of its icon sums up the situation:

Hover over the icon for a count of monitors in each state. Click it to open the window; right-click it for Check All Now, Start Monitoring, Stop Monitoring, Settings and Exit. To quit completely use File > Exit or Exit in the tray menu.

Only one copy runs at a time – launching it again just brings up the running copy. View > Taskbar Mode switches taskbar mode on or off quickly, and View > Always on Top keeps the window above others.

12. Menu commands and keyboard shortcuts

The most-used commands are also on the right-click menu of the monitor list.

13. Exporting, printing and copying

• Export on the toolbar, or File > Export Results (CSV), saves the whole list with every column to a CSV file you can open in Excel – and import again later with File > Import URL List.
• File > Save Event Log writes the event log to a CSV or text file.
• File > Print (Ctrl+P) prints the monitor list.
• Edit > Copy URL / Host (Ctrl+C) puts the addresses of the selected monitors on the clipboard.

14. Moving from URL Monitoring Tool 2.x

IP Monitoring Tool 3.0 is the successor of URL Monitoring Tool. Setup closes and uninstalls the old program, and on its first start the new version brings over your URL list and settings by itself – the event log reports how many URLs were imported. Every imported URL becomes a web page monitor; edit them to take advantage of the new monitor types and options.

15. Solving common problems

A site that works is reported as Down

Read the Details column first. Then try turning off Use HEAD request, raising the timeout, or setting the expected status code. Some sites answer 403 to programs they don’t recognize – in that case keep the default user agent.

Certificate errors

Messages such as “TLS certificate expired”, “name does not match” or “not trusted” mean your visitors see a browser warning as well. For internal servers with a self-signed certificate, turn on Ignore TLS certificate errors.

Ping fails although the site is fine

Lots of servers and firewalls drop ping requests. Switch to a web page or TCP port monitor.

Too many content change alerts

Turn on Compare visible text only and Ignore numbers, or replace the monitor with a keyword monitor.

Brief outages trigger alerts

Raise Failures before alert so a single missed check doesn’t count.

The site is unreachable only for you

A DNS problem at your internet provider, or a network fault somewhere on the route, can make a site unreachable from some places only. Test from a different network or device before you contact your hosting company.

16. Requirements, files and licensing

IP Monitoring Tool runs on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 (32-bit and 64-bit) and needs internet or network access to the sites and servers it watches. Your monitor list and settings are kept per Windows user; the event log file and page snapshots live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\IP Monitoring Tool. Uninstalling removes the program, its shortcuts, the “Start with Windows” entry, the log file and the snapshots.

You can try IP Monitoring Tool free for 30 days. To keep using it afterwards, buy a license for $19.95 – choose Help > Register in the program, or use the Buy now button on this page.