It is always wise to review your computer’s machine status regularly, at least once per day. Why is this? Well, the answer is fairly simple. Machines, as we all know, are very delicate things that can be severely damaged or even killed if mishandled in any way. When reviewing your machine status, you must first do so without being logged in.
There are many ways for you to be able to see your machine status like CPU utilization, processor speed, and total disk space. One of the easiest ways is through the use of the Windows Network Monitor tool (SNMP). This kind of tool is part of Microsoft Windows operating system and is accessible through the control panel. To access it, first be connected to a network, and then right click on the “Network Connection” icon in the left pane of your system desktop.
Aside from the above-mentioned easy-to-use interface, there are other ways by which you can view machine status through SNMP. The most common is through the use of the WinINet utility. With this utility, you will be able to view network adapter capabilities, Ethernet MAC address, network adapter port usage, and network bandwidth. If you prefer to have a graphical overview of these things, you may also use the WinINet Wizard.
The WinINet Wizard will allow you to connect to multiple computers on a network, and at the same time, you will be able to view their operation status. You may choose from several types of connection: plain TCP/IP, IP packets, and ICMP Echo Request (ICQ). If you will look closely, it is actually through the Wininet service that you will be able to gain access to the WinINet interface. Once you click on the Wininet icon, you will be prompted to enter the necessary configuration data.
The WinINet wizard will guide you through the different steps in monitoring your network, and at the same time, it will show you how to set the different alarms. As a matter of fact, you can use the WinINet alarm to create different alarms, such as a general warning, an alert when the computer gets too hot, and a debug alert. The general warning will let you know when there is a hardware problem with the machine. The debug alert will notify you whenever the machine encounters a specific issue.
This is just one example of how you can use WinINet to monitor multiple machines. In order for you to really benefit from this program, you should create at least three separate lines in your SNMP configuration. These three lines will allow you to monitor your machines status remotely; for instance, if you are in the office, you can use one line to send a general warning to all your employees to take care of their machine, and another line to send a debug message to a particular computer on the network. Just imagine what you can do if you have twenty or more computers!