AthTek NetWalk Free Edition 2.2.48

Overview

Network administrators and IT professionals often struggle to find a traffic monitoring software that meets their standards, which usually are a nice GUI, lots of capabilities and of course a low price. AthTek Netwalk Home edition comes with a great deal of features that are worth checking out, such as packet sniffing, real-time graphs regarding the data that is being collected (websites, IP addresses, ports etc.) as well as integration support with Wireshark. In addition, network admins can also use traffic filters to have better control over the data flow.

Installation

If you want to use this program then you’re probably experienced enough to complete the installation process without any problems. There are no difficult steps and settings anyways, although at some point you’ll be asked to install WinPcap driver if don’t have it already. The program is 100% clean from any 3^rd party software, including viruses, spyware and all kinds of malware.

AthTek Netwalk is compatible with Windows 2003, 2008, XP (SP2 or later), Vista and 7 OS. An Intel/AMD processor of 2GHz (or better) and a RAM capacity of 512MB (or above) are recommended.

Interface

When you open the program you will be prompted to choose the network adapter to be monitored. Highlighting any of the available adapters will show you some information about it, like its MAC address, IP address, Link Speed, Link Status and Max Frame Size. After making a selection the main window will open, which has a monitoring summary with several charts on its main screen. Those charts can be easily removed by clicking on the drop-down arrow on the top left corner of each chart and then clicking on “Delete”, but you can add others as well by clicking on the “Add” link located on the top right of the window.

Apart from the Monitor Overview screen, there are 4 other tabs with different features and actions. Those are: Layered View, Events, Matrix Map and Graphs. Each one has detailed information regarding network utilization.

Pros

AthTek Netwalk offers plenty of information about your network, which is pleasantly presented to you in the form of charts and graphs for better understanding. There are graphs for viewing Current Utilization, Application Layer Protocol Packets, Ping Requests and Replies, TCP SYNs, FINs and RSTs, TCP vs UDP, ARP Requests and Replies, Broadcast/Multicast/Total Packets, DNS Successful Queries vs Failed Queries and Packet Size Distribution. The Matrix Map is a way to represent the activities of all connections visually by placing them on a curve and connecting them appropriately with lines. Green line means that the connection is active, and blue line means the connection is inactive.

To start capturing packets, simply press F2. The captured packets can then be saved as .enc, .pcap, .adc or .dmp file format, giving you the ability to import them in the future to analyze them again or compare them with newer packets.

Cons

The program has no cons (no bugs, easy to use interface and a lot of features).

Alternatives

Two useful alternatives are NetworkMiner (paid) and Network Stumbler (free). However, compared to AthTek Netwalk they do not provide as much detailed information. If you’re looking for something more laid-back, then they are great choices.

Conclusion

This software is definitely worth a try for anyone who wants in-depth information about connected networks and their traffic. Highly recommended.