So, i've been so busy lately - sorry I have not had time to post :)

I've done a lot more geekwork around the house - I've updated my home network to use better hardware and also updated to a 50Mbps cable connection - SO nice. As my home network gets more and more complex (read: geeky) - I search for more and more ways to "geek out" with it.

I recently came across an awesome piece of software by a company named Paessler called PRTG network monitor. I'm not going to get into much detail in this quick post - but let me tell you, it's a fantastic piece of engineering. Being a software engineer myself, I usually don't get too geeked out by new software but this product has me running full tilt with ideas.

What is it? Well - PRTG is a monitoring app. It's called "Network Monitor" but I believe that's a bit of a misnomer - because it actually does so much more.  It monitors network devices (SNMP, NetFlow, WMI) computers (WMI, VMWare, etc), and can even monitor individual processes and common servers on those computers (SQL, Web, Mail, etc).  I will be posting a series of articles reviewing everything from the feature set all the way to some practical uses and analysis of my own network. I've long had questions about how much bandwidth I consume - both in my home and over the interwebs - and I am so excited to get monitoring and post some real world results.

Stay tuned - there will be some interesting information coming your way soon :)