HomeNet Manager 3.0: Manage Your Home Network More Efficiently Resource Sharing, Network Security, and More Joseph Moran
Beyond locating your IP address, HomeNet Manager seems to do a good job figuring out who your ISP is (it correctly identified ours as Comcast). It also includes a handy speed test for your broadband connection that you can run right from the application. Our only complaint about the test is that it reports only download speed — for users of applications like VoIP, videoconferencing, or online gaming, upload speed can be just as important. In any event, we found the test results jived with those of the popular speed test provided online at www.broadbandreports.com.
Another feature that you may find handy is My Digital Home, which lets you create a graphical representation of each of the rooms in your house. You can then associate each device found on your network with the appropriate room. Although My Digital Home probably won't be much use for those with only a device or two, if you have lots of them it can help you more easily distinguish between, say, the living room and bedroom TiVos or the bedroom printer versus the one in the den.
HomeNet Manager provides pop-up notifications for a variety of network events (such as when devices go on- or offline). We do like having easy access to this kind of information, but the notification window that appears in the lower right corner of the screen is far too large. You can suppress various types of messages to reduce the frequency of pop-ups, but we wish they could simply be made less obtrusive (like a small bubble above the tray).
Resource Sharing
Sharing resources such as folders or printers between Windows PCs can often be a pain for the uninitiated, but even the most neophyte user should have little difficulty doing so when they install HomeNet Manager on all their Windows sytems. HomeNet Manager offers a very simple sharing mechanism, so simple that you almost can't call it a wizard since there's only one dialog box to deal with. You essentially pick the folder or printer you want to share, assign a name for the share, and click OK.
There is a central place in HomeNet Manager that lists all the shared resources on the network, and when you select a device listing in the program you can view or access the resources available on that particular computer. You can also remotely view the system's firewall settings to make sure the ports required for sharing are open. (If not, HomeNet Manager will tell you which ports are blocked, but you need to configure the firewall manually back on the system in question.)
Security
Security is, of course, important for your home network, and HomeNet Manager includes an Intruder Protection feature that you can use to keep unauthorized systems from connecting to yours. You can choose to block any new client that attempts to join the network or block individual systems by selecting them from the list of online devices.
Most home network management tools that include security features work by interacting directly with your broadband router to activate a feature like MAC address filtering, but HomeNet Manager takes a different and fairly novel approach. It tries to thwart unauthorized systems essentially by spoofing your network's DHCP server and then responding to a new client's IP request with an address that is technically valid but on a isolated subnet that has no access to the subnet in use. In the event an unauthorized client is configured with a static IP, HomeNet Manager switches tactics and responds to ARP requests for the address in question, which triggers an apparent IP address conflict and invalidates the address.
We tried the Intruder Protection Feature against both DHCP and static IP clients, and it did work as advertised. However, the feature isn't foolproof, so it should be used only in addition to, rather than in lieu of, hardware-based security features such as wireless encryption. Also, HomeNet Manager's Intruder Protection shouldn't be used on a public network such as a Wi-Fi hotspot where it would almost certainly cause havoc with people trying to access it.
Conclusion
We ran HomeNet Manager on several Windows systems and for the most part it worked without any major problems. (For reasons that we can't explain, it ran very unstably on one of our four test systems, however.)
You can download a fully functional version 30-day trial version of HomeNet Manager, and registering the software after the trial period costs $39.95. SingleClick Systems is to be commended for bucking two unfortunate software trends these days. First, the HomeNet Manager license allows you to install the utility on as many systems as you want. Even better, once you register the program, you're done paying for it — there are no annual subscription fees to content with.
We think that most people — particularly those who are less technically-inclined — will find HomeNet Manager a good way to enhance the usability, management and security of their home network.
Joe Moran is a regular contributor to PracticallyNetworked.com
