Open Visual Traceroute: Open Source Network Tool
Many times, those of us who are just more than normal users of a computer, that is, office and administrative users, tend to know and use certain technical commands or tools that allow us to explore in greater depth, how certain things work or the how we solve certain problems, which are often associated with our Internet connection.
Although, many tend to opt for the reliable ones terminal commands or tools, others tend to prefer comfortable visual (graphical) applications or desktop tools that meet the same goal. And a good example of these visual alternatives is Open Visual Traceroute.
Thus, Open Visual Traceroute can be considered as the graphic alternative to the known traceroute command. And also, it can be considered as the free version expired software visual traceroute formerly known as NeoTrace. And the equivalent of the current software called VisualRoute de visualware.
Open Visual Traceroute
According to Official website of the Open Visual Traceroute (OVT), it is briefly described as:
"An Hopen source visual and cross-platform network tool".
What is Open Visual Traceroute (OVT)?
However, more broadly we can say that OVT is:
Una free and open Java-based tool very useful for visual tracking and detection of network data packets, since it uses a component of 3D or 2D map. Furthermore, it allows you to easily export the data to an image or text file.
In addition, it is available for the different Operating Systems most used, that is, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, and is distributed under the LGPL v3 license.
In other more technical words, we can clarify that this tool is very useful when it comes to graphically show the jumps taken by the data packets from our computer, improving incredibly, what we usually see and interpret when executing in a terminal with a similar command like traceroute.
Features
Apart from the above, TVO also serves to be used as:
- A network packet sniffer that allows you to see what data is being sent back and forth from the local system to the Internet.
- A substitute for the "whois" command, due to its excellent function called "Whois" (Whois) that allows you to obtain public information about a domain.
- A 3D traffic viewer, thanks to the data being displayed on a 3D world map. Although, it allows low-end computers or Operating Systems that have problems with OpenGL drivers to run the program using a 2D Map.
Versions and news
Currently the last released version is 1.7.1, which brought like novelty updating a library to geoip v2. However, the previous version 1.7.0 brought quite a few new arrivals, among which we can mention the following:
- Feature: Added DNS locator records feature
- Feature: Inclusion of proxy system usage settings when available. Now it allows you to specify the username and password, if necessary.
- Feature: Inclusion of anti-aliasing fonts.
- Bookstore: World Wind library version update.
- Bookstore: Java support update to version 1.8.
- Correction: Fix for hanging network interface detection.
- Correction: Setting to increase geoip db download time to avoid problems at first start.
Installation
For installation in Linux Operating Systems has packages in .deb format. , .rpm and .sh. For more information about its installation, you can directly access the following link. And for more information on TVO you can visit the following links Sourceforge, GitHub y SourceForge.
Conclusion
We hope this "useful little post" about the open source tool for networks called «Open Visual Traceroute», which mainly offers a tracking function that allows you to see on a 3D world map the route that the data follows from a local computer to a destination server; is of great interest and utility, for the entire «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» and of great contribution to the diffusion of the wonderful, gigantic and growing ecosystem of applications of «GNU/Linux».
And for more information, always do not hesitate to visit any Online library as OpenLibra y jedit to read books (PDFs) on this topic or others knowledge areas. For now, if you liked this «publicación», don't stop sharing it with others, in your Favorite websites, channels, groups, or communities of social networks, preferably free and open as Mastodon, or secure and private like Telegram.