Although it's possible to make far too much of grammatical errors/spellings within programs, it can be an important part of the decision whether to buy a product, wherever it is developed. On that basis, it would be worth AthTEK's while to ensure that its website is presented in simple, idiomatic English, Spanish, German etc in future.

Hi again!

Sorry for my delayed reply, because I've just finished reading all the comments.
Some of them are trenchant, but most of the comments make me warm.
I do really appreciate that you guys kindly share what you think about this software, thank you!

Now we need to take steps to improve the software as well as the software page on our site.
Step 1. remove some of the awards which are not belong to this software. Though some of the awards belong to our other software and we previously list them here to show all we have ever won, they might misguide visitors that they only belong to AthTek NetWalk.
Step 2. learn from the comments and make an improvement on our software.
Step 3. check all the translations on our website, fix those grammar errors.

Thank you so much for your kindly help, and we are looking forward to further relationship between us.

If you have any suggestion, please let me know, and I will try my best to make a progress. My email address is support@athtek.com
Thank you!

Following the discussion here, it took me until just now to download and give it a try. I'm quite a bit impressed! Surely didn't try out everything, but for me it seems just like a very helpful user interface on top of WireShark/NetCap. So it's a keeper for me, if further testing will not reveal any problems.

To the developer: it was already mentioned here, that you're falsely claiming some awards on your website. Selling software (or anything else) as a business is based on trust. But trust is not, what you will earn if you make obviosly false statements on your site. You can overexaggerate some features but it's not a good style to lie about anything! That's not a good marketing strategy. And I really hope you're not lying about some other features of your software as well.

Haven't much to add to this discussion. Just wanted to say thanks to ATHtek and GOTD. I actually was here shortly after 3am yesterday, when there was only 2 comments. I normally wait for others to post their comments before I decide if the software is something I could legitimately (spelling police please forgive me) use. After reading about half of the 90+ comments, I decided I was still undecided. Since I am currently building a 'renderfarm' consisting of 4 nodes (in one wooden case) I thought this may prove to be useful if I can figure out what everything means. Looks nice, but more info than I know what to do with. Not a criticism, just my initial thoughts.

I'm kinda new to networks (like "haven't even started yet" new) so pehaps someone can alay my fears that I'll need to install this to my un-built nodes (24hrs and all that). From what I can make out this operates from the server so that isn't necessary. Please confirm.

Thanks again to ATHtek for allowing to try their product and GOTD for everything they do.

Download went fine, and the interface looks acctractively organized. The 20 day limitation on the life of the software is not enough time to really absorb the applications and capabilities this has to offer for folks who have busy schedules. I do appreciate the developer being available to comment here. There's a lot of hours put in to create an application like this. Thank you. R

Personally I'm a longtime fan of "The Dude" freeware by Mikrotik Router OS.
The Dude network monitor is a new application by MikroTik which can dramatically improve the way you manage your network environment.
This freeware has many features.
Some of it's features:
•The Dude is free of charge!
•Auto network discovery and layout
•Discovers any type or brand of device
•Device, Link monitoring, and notifications
•Includes SVG icons for devices, and supports custom icons and backgrounds
•Easy installation and usage
•Allows you to draw your own maps and add custom devices
•Supports SNMP, ICMP, DNS and TCP monitoring for devices that support it
•Individual Link usage monitoring and graphs
•Direct access to remote control tools for device management
•Supports remote Dude server and local client
•Runs in Linux Wine environment, MacOS Darwine, and Windows
•Best price/value ratio compared to other products (free of charge)

I was looking online for info on why my installation wasn't working. I already had WinPcap installed previously, so I didn't need to allow NetWalk to add it again; but no traffic data was being monitored/captured in spite of the network adapter being detected and shown as "connected" in the adapter selection window.

Well, it turns out that on my notebook PC the USB wireless adapter I'm using in place of the burned up internal one doesn't work with WinPcap as mentioned on its website under the FAQs (some do half-way, some don't at all). When I connected to the hard-wired port with a cable, everything began working fine.

(My other machine's wireless adapter -- mounted in a motherboard slot and not USB -- DID work to show data, although again, because it is wireless, according to the WinPcap site, probably not completely. Read about the issue with wireless adapters and fake packets & emulated frames under the WinPcap FAQs.)

(Actually, there IS one brand-family of "AirPcap" wireless USB adapters by Riverbed for $200 - $700 that WILL work properly.)

Anyway, in researching my issue I stumbled into the following:

I'm no expert, so I'm not sure if "Cascade Pilot Personal Edition" by Riverbed is a comparable product (and another commercial "front-end" for WireShark?), but it's priced at $1,295 with a "First Year Annual Software Maintenance" of $195:

www.tinyurl.com/3qs3hnn
www.cacetech.com/products/catalog/
www.riverbed.com/us/products/cascade/cascade_pilot.php

The other editions say to click to "Contact a Sales Rep." which usually means hearing a sales pitch to justify even higher prices!

So perhaps AthTek Netwalk Enterprise Edition is actually competitively priced for the intended audience?

Well, this is one giveaway I am actually coming back to check up on the comments - so I must think that this app has great potential...

Francis Vandenolas # 93 and others that can't get this to run though the install seems OK - if you read my original comment # 48, you will see that I pointed out that you need "Promiscuous Mode" network card drivers for packet capture. The default drivers that ship with Windows for each NIC usually does not support promiscuous mode. I would gather from the comments, a surprising number of people have NICs that shipped with a promiscuous mode capable driver, or can use one of the basic generic drivers packaged with WinPCap.

Experience has taught me that packet capture can affect overall system performance, so these types of utilities should be installed on a dedicated network analysis system. In a pinch, I once took a couple of workstations setup for multimedia learning with streamed video, tossed on the appropriate promiscuous mode driver, WinPCap, WireShark and some other utilities, and lo and behold, I got a call the next day from another instructor wondering what I had done to them - the video streaming was stuttering on those specific systems.

Well AthTek, you asked what you thought an appropriate price might be for a lifetime license, and I would have to say $200 would be more appropriate given your application's building blocks.

Hello, #37, Kerry L?

I just tuned into this running dialog about today's offer. I read your cautionary advice backed by your extensive list of credentials.

You did mention that you would be downloading and trying out today's offer, AthTek NetWalk Enterprise Edition package.

Is it taking you all day to install and come up with at least an initial impression you can share with us before the offer is over so the rest of us can benefit from your expertise?

With such an impressive background and extensive experience, shouldn't it take you only a few minutes to quickly recognize and sum up any deficiencies and/or unique features, then assess and pass judgement on a package such as this?

We're waiting... is it good or no?

This is a very nice product for GAOTD. Yes it's new and needs a bit of polish, but to someone hunting down network issues and looking for something a bit MORE than free Wireshark, this is pretty nice.

I've used it for about 3 hours now, and once I was comfortable where normal things were located and what was double-click drill-down enabled and what wasn't I can say I'm impressed actually.

Professionally I've used the now Fluke ClearSight Analyzer, the Network Associates sniffer software, WireShark, OmniPeek and a bunch of others. This product is closest to the Fluke product in feature set and gui overall.

The difference... Fluke's license PER INSTANCE will set you back about 3500.00 plus yearly support. This is much cheaper. I, however like a lot of others feel I'll never actually buy the software for personal use unless the license is setup differently. For the enterprise it's probably not quite ready for primetime even though the feature set is there.

That kind of leaves AthTek in a bind. A product that needs polish, but has great features that hasn't been proven in the right technical circles to give it any street cred that would get it into the enterprise market, yet priced out of market for personal use by the said engineers that would give it long term sustainability.

GAOTD is one solution to that which I'm very thankful AthTek chose to utilize.

This gives me at least ONE product that I received for free use until the end of 2012 instead of firing up EtherApe, WireShark, and a few SolarWinds products all just to get the matrix and level information and the underlying network data.

For me at work I'll most likely still be using WireShark and ClearSight Analyzer and at home NetWalk and WireShark for the time being.

Thanks AthTeck and GAOTD

I've used a few network sniffers in that past. Instalation and registration of Netwalk was a breeze. It updated WinPcap to the latest version.

The interface is well done and easy to use. I'll spend a few days checking it out... so far its working great...

Hi everyone, Installed a couple of hours ago and can't find anything
negative about this peice of software so far.
Thanks AthTeck & GAOTD

Installed perfect in my win7 box. Nice GUI with graphs, like the matrix map but would also suggest adjusting line thickness to represent bandwidth usage.
Thanks GATD and AthTEK

Whatever one may say about response from athtek and pricing etc,the fact remains what matters is the program and it is an outstanding piece of soft.captures each and every packet transmission and I think until you format,it will remain licensed,so lifetime.I first heard of this company today but let me say,it looks to be outstanding comany.This at least is.I have been struggling with Wireshark and even Capsa etc.I think it is most potent,simple relatively and a very useful soft needed by all.As soon as I opened it,it showed 96.x % bandwidth used by HTTP,rest by DNS.All TCP,UDP connections are shown.If one will use without prejudice,one will love it.I was desperately looking but could not as these packet sniffing very difficult to make.
Two thumbs up for GOTD,it is getting better and better,not only useless converters and rippers and screensavers but super duper hits mostly now.Everbody loves Raymond and now GOTD.
Forget all comments,it is safe,install,choose right adapter,start monitor,capture,you will love it.Many many uses.
Although I do not think it can actively prevent anything like Netbalancer on GOTD could limit and even cut requests at its will.I think it can show everything but one will need a firewall to act upon results.Thanks

This is disturbing that almost no one here gets it, including the people who claim to have network certifications and #90, Steve. Open-source software is just that, open-source. Paint.net was originally open-source and attempted to allow very limited commercial use, but quickly found out that didn't work because people would steal most of paint.net and sell it as their own commercial product. Wireshark is licensed under the standard GPL. Most of the pricing provisions in the GPL deal with distribution costs, if I were to charge I'd run the rest by a lawyer. In any case the source code has to be freely available. The GPL has the standard provision that any derivative works remain open-source. You don't get to use the hard work of other developers, in some cases like Linux, perhaps tens of thousands of developers, make some proprietary modification, and then sell it as your own commercial product. Open-source is just that, if you modify it then your product must be open-source. No enterprise in any country which recognizes intellectual property would go near AthTek NetWalk. Almost all of the audio/video converters offered here are from companies ripping off ffmpeg, I wouldn't pay any of them a dime. GOTD itself is a victim of IP theft, Google Related often returns YouTube videos about how to hack GOTD setups or offered products. The people posting such videos need to be sent to prison for the rest of their lives. Long before open-source licenses, there was copyrighted software with published source code. That was automatically protected under copyright law (technically, even without an explicit copyright notice), it was a violation to use it in a commercial product without the developer's written consent. Most companies which I've worked for have violated some law. At one company, a person very high up in the company used a very tiny piece of copyrighted code to avoid the coding effort. I thought that he was nuts, he was risking the entire company over a relatively trivial routine. BDJ recently offered a file comparison program which looked very suspiciously like the open-source WinMerge, especially from a features perspective (almost identical details at every level). Even more suspiciously, the most recent development was back when the development of the current version of WinMerge ceased (it's still under development, but on a different track and no functional version is available).

Sort of puzzled by all the negative comments so far that mainly seem to be centered around alleged grammatical errors and lack of reviews.

Okay, reviews are lacking but it's the program we should be reviewing and I see nothing bad about it. In fact, I see it as a rather comprehensive networking information tool. Better yet, it's free!

In addition to what #90, Steve, said correctly: If the program makes use of LGPL libraries it's not even necessary to publish/provide the source code.

AthTeck, me again. Thinking they might interfere, I stopped Process Lasso and Secunia PSI. Still no data! I nevertheless went on searching within Netwalk itself and bingo, after accepting to "switch adapters" in the Monitor menu, I noticed the right one wasn't checked. I choose it and, to my great pleasure, I was once again being fascinated by the nice "animated" graphs...

So, you shouldn't worry about me any more (and maybe go back to grammar and dictionary ;-)...

BTW, I also sent a comment about software costs. It was briefly displayed, then disappeared. I just remarked that, more than 15 years ago, the Telecom company I worked for in the IT department, bought a little piece of software, a... sniffer, for about $15,000 as well as the also expensive (in those days) portable to run it. As someone already mentionned, $500 might be too expensive for the casual user (I couldn't afford it on my small retirement allowance!), while this is peanuts for the larger companies...

hello every one i have successfully installed the athtek, i have the key also but its say register for user name where i have to register .. n how cant see any thing on site help .........

What a shame .... Inaccurate by up to 10x

I do a lot of network analysis. I was really hoping that this would give me some of the graphs that I only see in commercial tools.

I have a 56Kbps LLU link that I monitor through other means and operates at 56Kbps +/- a few percent, with an uptime of 99.99%. The ovview/Protocols shows a total of 740Kbps. Ok, so we could argue aggregates and timing intervals, but one particular type of traffic is showing currently at 620Kbps. That just isn't possible and this is confirmed by other tools.

Real-Time Monitoring is okay but needs enhancements
The graphs and charts give the advantage of real-time monitoring and the interface is very easy to use. Having said that I think that the major problem that I have using the tool is lack of confidence in the results until this is fixed.

What is my PC doing on the network?
One thing that I did think was really worthwhile (and is available in several tools) is the Application Protocol Manager. This tells you the program and port number. This is incredibly useful when you are trying to see which programs are (or attempting to) access the Internet. This really helps when you are trying to lock down your PC.

Suggestions (for wider appeal IMHO):
There are a number of issues in the software. If you add a graph to the main screen, the "reset" button scrolls off the screen. It really needs to have an actual throughput somewhere on the main screen (bytes/sec or bps) though it does show the packet count. As it runs in background, I would have thought that you should be able to query back total accumulated Internet usage, which would be useful for those on limited packages. While you can add graphs, it would be nice to be able to get rid of some of the standard ones too. Okay, you may be able to do some of this, but it wasn't immediately apparent.

Thanks
Overall, thanks GOTD for the trial. I haven't checked for any activities as suggested in some of the other posts, but of course that is something I would look into. If you can fix the 10x problem I would definitely like to take a look again, though I think that this would have to have a longer life for my liking.

Hey AthTeck, pleased to hear my comments were a bit useful... But for now I would say leave that dictionary (and Grammar for that) alone and do go on helping us out. And, unfortunately, I do need your help here.

I installed NetWalk on my often misbehaving Vista and all went well, except the fact WinPcap installed itself in the folder it choose without giving me the opportunity to make that decision myself. I try to keep a tidy PC (and MS is the worst culprit here!), so I hate this! BTW, the installer you use through GAOTD also gives the opportunity to choose the Start Menu location and you didn't use it ;-).

I started the program and was amazed by the wealth of available info and all nicely presented. I could go on watching the real-time pie-charts following every packet around. Kudos' for that! I'll now have to learn how to interpret all that stuff. Kudos' too for the nice Help file (except maybe for the horrible font in the left column)!

But, on my portable (Win 7 64 bit), the installation of WinPcap went wrong, complaining about some .dll, but saying it would complete anyway and suggesting I send them the install.log file. Which I didn't do because the info here was exactly the same as on my Vista machine (except for the reported OS, of course) and also because NetWalk should be installed and activated in the ubiquitous 24 hour period. NetWalk started up nicely, but no graphs to be spotted as it gets no data!

So I uninstalled WinPcap, downloaded it and this time the installation went on normally. Problem: NetWalk still gets no data! So I uninstalled the latter and installed it again choosing not to force the WinPcap installation since it was already present! But... still no data available! Without uninstalling I reinstalled NetWalk once again and let WinPcap force an install as well. And, alas, still no data available in NetWalk.

The Vista machine is protected by the Online Armor firewall and Ashampoo AntiMalware while the Agnitum Outpost Security Suite Pro is in charge of the Win 7 one. I did, of course, "allow" every instance it asked about during the installation and when starting NetWalk.

So, what can I do?

I love trying out network sniffers. I've been using Wireshark since it was Ethereal. Won't have a chance to really test this today but the interface reminds me of the old Network Associates Sniffer Pro.

It's too bad that we can't make comments after the giveaway is over, especially for software like this that takes time to fully test and evaluate so here's a suggestion to the GAOTD team:

Instead of just having a link to the forums (or in addition to) create a daily thread in the forum and have a link from here to the thread discussing the days giveaway. I think that would allow regular visitors the opportunity to more easily find and share information about the software as well as helping the developers improve their products through comments made after people have made a thorough evaluation of their product(s). I think it would make a more cohesive experience and possibly add an additional level of interactivity here on your site.

Just a thought - thanks for listening.

Installed and activated okay on Windows 7 x64.
Personally, I found the program screens full of pie charts and hexadecimal IP codes and numbers very confusing.
My personal position on this software is that I cannot ever see me using it. (or any of it's competitors either for that matter)

Many thanks for supplying it to GAOTD, AthTek but this program is not for me - Uninstalled.

I have downloaded this and installed it on Server 2008 R2 in a test environment. Install was smooth. Already have WinPcap so that was not a factor. Getting around the interface is pretty intuitive. Would like to see some balloon tips in certain areas since they are somewhat different than what is normally seen in applications like this. I like the interface. I have to take much more time to analyze what it actually does. At first glance, I notice that there appears to be no way to follow TCP streams which is very useful. Also, a lack of analytical tools to run on the captured data. Like any packet capture tool, in a switched network this will only capture data to and from your hardware address unless you can set up a monitor port on your switch and your NIC can be set to promiscuous mode. I noticed that once a capture is started the stop button is grayed out and there is no way to stop the capture other than close the window and save it.
I have not run it long enough to see how it handles the many protocols out there. One thing about Wireshark is the ability to update the protocol database, hopefully that exists in this application as well, just have not found it yet. When I ran my first scan, after one minute the duration at the bottom of the screen said one hour not one minute. Time sync is of the essence when capturing packets so this will need to be addressed.

That being said, having used programs like Wireshark, Tcpdump, Kismet and others for many years on many networks I would need much more time to investigate this application and its pros and cons. Worth downloading to try, just be safe with it as with all unknown applications. Don’t take it to work and throw it on one of your boss’ servers without being sure of what it does.

And I do believe credit is due to the vendor offering it here and staying around to defend themselves.

Since downloading some hours back, I've mostly played with the monitoring aspect so far. I only checked that the packet capture worked as expected and performed under high load (which it did).

I'm ignoring any grammar/spelling issues since the author is not a native English speaker. As such, I can forgive these issues with the web site and posts here. I consider them minor issues that can easily improve.

As far as I'm concerned this seems to be an excellent piece of software. The UI is clean & crisp. The performance is good and I found the Monitoring functionality truly outstanding.

If you're into this type of thing, I strongly recommend giving this application a try.

I would like to see a Minimize to the System Tray function, this would be useful when monitoring over a long duration and I would also like to see copy Server/Client IPs on the context menus.

Now, if I could just afford to spend $499 on it! ;) However for enterprise this, as the author indicated, is a very good price.

Installed in XP Mode with no problems. I like it (highlights for me are the Matrix View, Alarms and the Graphs) and I think I'll find it a useful addition to Wireshark. I can see myself using it as an overview of a capture (helping me to zoom in on the areas needing detailed packet inspection in Wireshark) or simply to provide a "finger on the pulse" when I'm not specifically looking for something.

My only concern is the embedded Wireshark. Wireshark regularly issue security updates - how do we apply these within NetWalk?

Thanks to all concerned,
Brian.

#27: "... It would certainly help if someone who is heavily dependent on networks would give an unbiased opinion..."

IMHO #48, CompNetTeach, had a decent way of putting it. Maybe the easiest way I can come up with to get a handle on it is to start with winpcap.org , reading the 1st couple of paragraphs under the Introduction heading. In a nutshell, data's passed around [transmitted/received] in small packets, & the WinPcap that NetWalk uses captures each of those. Next, from the WireShark [wireshark.org] docs: "Wireshark is a network packet analyzer. A network packet analyzer will try to capture network packets and tries to display that packet data as detailed as possible. You could think of a network packet analyzer as a measuring device used to examine what's going on inside a network cable, just like a voltmeter is used by an electrician to examine what's going on inside an electric cable (but at a higher level, of course)."

So you have WinPcap capturing the packets, WireShark analyzing them, & NetWalk providing a way for you to see & interact with that data. Just like it's useful for air traffic controllers & the railroad equivalent to see all traffic, NetWalk is more useful when it can give you the big picture -- the NetWalk site has info on how to do that. Many people on a single machine will find simpler, easier tools just as useful to more-or-less sound the alarm if something maybe bad is going on... there is such a thing as getting lost in the midst of too much data, & rather than spending your time diagnosing & fixing things, you might wind up distracted, just trying to find your way out of the forest.

* * *

#37: "... A search of PCMag for AthTek and Netwalk yields no results..."

FWIW many companies with an international presence have localized urls... While I cannot read Russian, & am simply too lazy to plug every Google hit into their translator, AthTek does come up on PCMag's Russian site, & may come up on quite a few more of their non-American sites too. At pcmag.com Google just comes up with hits from their shareware download pages. Long story short, I don't know if great awards & reviews exist for NetWalk on any of the many PCMag sites or not, & I suspect many (most?) others in the US don't either. :-)

At any rate, whether faulting a company's English is cool or not, whether the location of their offices should matter or not, to some potential customers it does matter, & IMHO comments that state that stuff is important are as useful as any others, helping the dev figure out if that part of the market is worth spending whatever resources or not. Likewise, comments that people clicked site logos & weren't taken to whatever reviews are I would think important -- if they exist on non-American sites, maybe have excerpts translated & put those on the NetWalk site instead?

Hello everyone, I could not reply to you during the past few hours, don't know why. And a lot of my replies had been ate up, so that I could not say thank you to all the comments.

To the FaceBook question: some web pages contain code of FaceBook. it runs in the background and AthTek NetWalk will capture the traffic data of it.

To the Name Table question: please go to monitor window, and access to Protocols - DNS. Add the packet file manually and you will get what you want.

To the wireshark question: we use part of wireshark functions as an independent exe file. It has a separate progress along with NetWalk. When you are sniffing packets, NetWalk will communicate with wireshark to work out a better performance. We can share the communication part of code if you wish.

To the award question: we do win a lot of awards from many software download websites, but we didn't divide them to every software because of the same page template. We could remove some of them from the NetWalk page. But we have to reserve the other which NetWalk really has. BTW, we didn't set a link to those sites because of SEO (search engine optimize) reasons, and we do have rights to keep the link or not.

To the price question: we also offer a free personal edition for home users. Please go to http://www.athtek.com/netwalk/free.html. This GOTD version is set for commercial use. We have designed this software for years before you can find it on our website.

I hope to answer all your questions, but it seems GOTD sometimes will block my reply. Sorry for that, and thank you for all your comments!

love their
"Catch A Cheating Spouse" and the description, made me laugh, thank at least for that
Sometimes you have felt that your lover become apathy to you, but you have not enough evidence to prove it. Sometimes your husband becomes busier than ever, and he would no longer love to share his spare time with you. That is a dangerous signal. AthTek Keylogger can help you to know the truth.

@Fubar and others: Open source software does not mean that it can't be sold. The GPL (Gnu Public License) under which Wireshark is released explicitly states that software derived from GPL-licensed code can be sold for money. What makes it "free" is that the source code must be made available on request for no additional charge. See the GPL FAQ for more.

Waiting while virtual disks were being copied, waiting for snapshots to complete etc. I wound up at the Sysinternals page at Microsoft.com to grab the new version of Autoruns -- I also downloaded & read SysinternalsMalwareCleaning.pdf, which had slides from a presentation by Mark Russinovich... quoting the slide, The Future of Malware: "You can't know you're infected unless you find a symptom". That's one big reason for an app like NetWalk -- I'm not sure how many folks worry about performance, load balancing etc. on their home networks. I'm also not sure how many will set things up as recommended on the dev's site: http://www.athtek.com/netwalk/how-to.html#compare , monitoring the entire network rather than just their personal PC/laptop -- installed that way it can still be useful, but may also be a bit of overkill for the average user. That said, what AthTek gives you with NetWalk is a way to visualize & work with what can be a huge amount of network traffic data -- see http://www.athtek.com/netwalk/help.html for a screenshot. When you're looking for malware &/or misbehaving software you look to see what apps/processes are running, looking for stuff that shouldn't be there -- with NetWalk you can do the same thing for network traffic.

In order to work NetWalk uses two apps, WinPcap [winpcap.org] & Wireshark [wireshark.org/ -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark ], both current versions. The included Wireshark isn't the full download package, so installation is integrated with NetWalk -- WinPcap is installed separately during setup. Please bear in mind that installing something like Wireshark or WinPcap isn't like a video converter or game you can install & then forget about, because they need to be kept up to date in case security vulnerabilities are discovered, just like with your web browser or Flash etc. Installing NetWalk, most of the impact come from WinPcap, which installs it's own driver. Out of ~65 new registry entries, NetWalk itself adds an uninstall key. The "AthTek NetWalk" program folder holds 195 files, 6 folders, ~55 MB -- a 2nd folder with the same name is added to User\ Application Data [XP] or User\ AppData\Roaming [win7] & holds configuration data. The "WinPcap" program folder holds just 3 files, ~232 KB, & you also get 4 files + 1 driver file installed to Windows system folder. Installation didn't disturb Mamutu or Security Essentials, while the Microsoft Attack Surface Analyzer only complained about weak ACLs [Access Control List].

I seriously considered this program, then I visited their website.

No - it wasn't the huge amount of grammatical errors or redundant phrases that turned me off. It was the fake awards posted at the bottom of the page. If AthTek actually had any of these, they would have supplied a link to them. Instead, they're trying to profit off of people gullible enough to believe they are a reputable company.

GAOTD, please find better vendors.

#24 your safe browsing reports seem to have NOTHING to do with AhTek or their web site. One is related to Capsa but Capsa is not being given away here and Capsa is time limited both in hours and days unless you use it so it is not free. Ahtek thank you for your responses.

Hi everyone,
I installed the software today because I am always looking for a good network tool.
I think the Matrix view is awesome because of the details it gives in realtime. It gives me info I need for finding what I want to stop with my firewall.
The graphs icon could be better (while in it) if you could click the high point so that you can pinpoint what address or protocol is using that much bandwidth and nothing in the GRAPHS section gives enough information as it should with the higher priced version.
Also within the OVERVIEW section, I believe that the realtime graph should not only have the option to move to see the graph but should stop and stay where you scroll over to the left so that you can determine what is going on at certain points in time, not a pause but to view it without having to go to the graphs section or even if you could double click the point that is moving higher, etc, etc would help.

I used http://www.solarwinds.com at one place I worked at and they don't dare say on their website what the price is for their networking software(smart). Really smart because people dont know what it takes to develop some really good networking software. I dont either.
I believe your software is pretty awesome but dont understand the price difference vs others.
Thanks to GAOTD and Athtek for the trial.

I think their name is a little strange "ATHtek"? Sounds like someone with a "lisp" when you say it out loud, try it.

I think it's great that AthTek is here TO defend itself as well as answer concerns that many may have.

Let's give each other a little respect and some space. In the computer environment of today people are right to be super cautious in protecting their computer, identities and data, etc. Theses fears are JUSTIFIED. Why else does Microsoft among others continually supply security patches to do just that.

There ARE many scamming companies out there and there are thieves trying to steal your keystrokes etc. Expressing such concerns are not wrong but welcomed. The drawback is when they become judge, jury and executioner of the developers.

I usually wait until I get a feel about users concerns before I bite. I gladly evaluate such concerns then make my decisions based on what I judge as ligitimate and unfounded ones. Still, I am glad that thoses concerns are voiced.

I have no need for today's give away as, alas, I a poor one computer one user person with only internet access without sharers, so I wont try this software. But if I had a network I think I would give it a try under virtual controls.

So keep the comments comming folks, and don't be put off by personal attacks on your opinions because there is probably another user who is greatful and had not considered things from that point of view, of which I am one.

Let's give the developer a LITTLE space, but think of it, we're inviting there software into our cpu living room to associate with all our little ones in the form of our data and personal information. While we don't expect perfection, a little decorum and professionalism are welcomed, expected and demanded, depending on the householder. The fact that they are here presenting there credentials sould be welcomed. But the developer should also realize that they are the ones seeking entry, and we sould be suspicious about those asking us to introduce them to our little data children.

I have been using GAOTD for quite a while and have found most of their offerings to be highly useful as well as a few that were trivial or not for me. I use those I like and don't bother with those I do not. I appreciate and laud the developers for giving end users a chance to try out their software for free. There have been many times in the past when I have purchased software for hundreds of dollars and then found it did not do what I needed it to do and was stuck with it while losing the money of the purchase price.

For those of you without a clue (as is obvious from your posts) perhaps you need to think about this some more... enterprise companies do not always list what software they use, especially when it comes to network control and support. That can be like posting a neon sign for hackers telling them what program they need to hack for security exploits. Second off, Despite common misconceptions, the internet does NOT have all the information about every little thing, not even part... Think not? Try looking up the plans for building a nuclear weapon... there is still information that is restricted or omitted due to security reasons.

Next there is the comparisons of apples and oranges... just because there are other software offerings that may or may not be good or even "ethical" for some uses, does NOT mean that the software in question is "bad" or "unethical". I can point to several companies who make fantastic programs in one field and other programs suck. Stick to the program under review.

Finally, the thumbs up or down really should be further divided into a thumbs up and down for those who have tried it and another pair for those who did not, i.e. not useful to them, did not need/like, or whatever. As to the voting on comments. Perhaps you have noticed the wording "Did you find this comment useful"... that means that if I vote down some whining drivel, it is not because I am a shill for the company, it means that I found the comment to be a waste of the time it took to read. As in very little to no useful information was gained and I was annoyed by the troll that posted it. Legitimate complaints, problems or commentary are useful and may be voted up if they address an issue, answer a question, or provide useful information about a product... THAT is what it is for.

Now that I have wasted bandwidth addressing something that SHOULD already be known, I found the program to be quite useful on my home network with several widely varying system OS's. I don't think I found it useful enough to pay the $500 for the program as well as the additional licensing, but I could see a very definite use for it even on my network.

My thanks to the GAOTD team and to ATHtek for making the offer and providing support and responses.

@AthTek said,
"I am still curious, how much do you think a professional commercial used network sniffer should be? I want some more advice about this, because I do agree with you that price $499 is a little high for home users."

Well, I am just a small working guy, I can afford to buy things from time to time, I have domains, dyndns, dedicated hardware firewall (raqcop), two switches, local rack servers, workstations, unmanaged servers and even paid hosting, I have a certain amount of my budget dedicated to network security, so in other words, the more I can afford the more secure I can maintain the network. But with that said, I am also not interested in open ended revolving credit type applications which expire. I tried to layout my network and resources to last a decade. (Yes that's what I was shooting for.) So, I been thinking about this question on cost you ask, and for someone with a home network looking for leaks or analyzing packets, or sniffing passwords, etc. and I compared to Network Observer price list, and Tamosoft price list, and *my situation* (I can't speak for anyone else) would be say $120-$140 US +- $20 (the more you head towards $200 the more you will cut off) And advertise again, Big this time. I mean really get it out there that you have deals.

Anyway, I arrive at this number because I could never afford Network Observer. Period. The Tamosoft has a $250 home deal if you look at their three licenses. but that really doesn't get my juices flowing when I can run etherape in a VM. I had tried a trial a couple times, one thing I don't like is how Commview's "STATISTICS" menu is a new floating toolbar window (let floating be optional, and if you float it give a full toolbar to work with it . If you want to sell stuff to my class of people, it will have to be below their commview product baseline in my opinion. I'd have to say commview is your competition.

With that said, feature I'd love to see. Minimize to systray instead of taskbar. And a pop out w/toolbar of the network/physical layer matrix. Although everything's quite functional without such changes.

Hop I helped you bud.

~ Fredward





For folks with the language issue, it's possible to get a killer product out when you don't speak the native language, look at The Bat! by ritlabs, the thing you got to remember is measurements are a universal language. As long as you got the math right, the race car is ready to go, it's simply a translation project for the side handles to hold on to. 1 VDC is 1 VDC in any language.

I have respect for any programmer that puts out that matrix graphic like that. this is a very nice program.

There will probably be few people that read this, but what the heck: the critics and the critics of the critics are usually a fun read on GOTD. "Did you find this comment useful", will naturally mean diff things to diff people. Example, whats useful to me would probably make Fubar yawn. People that are critical of grammar, unsure of the safety of the offering, sometimes are...., adamant with their criticism. Is that the personality, wrong side of the bed, hangover, etc, talking? Who cares as what difference does it make in anyone's life other then the entrepreneurial offer-er?

I applaud all those struggling programmers and especially the ones that aren't primarily English speakers. They're out and about trying to promote and better their product, and I say congrats to you! The ones that pop into the conversation here during their software offer, are truly to be commended. They are proud of their product and are offering GOTD users a chance to interact with them one on one. What could be better then that!

Do I have a point? Yep. sorta. If one is unsure of the safety, due to research, which isn't complete, I mean, for example concerning the awards, did anyone contact the possibly aggrieved sites and ask if there was an award given in the distant past? No time to do so, right? There doesn't have to be a link for it to be legit.

I'm hoping the people offering these free programs have a thick skin. They'll need such dealing with the inevitable slings n' arrows shot their way when dealing with a wide variety of nerdy personalities.

AthTek mentioned that his website is a package deal that was pre-made. I've seen this before on other websites where the testimonies are all phony names and script. The new owner of the package has to delete the old & add their own testimonies and, in this case, awards. - I'm certain that AthTek will straighten out the discrepancies given time. - He has already shown integrity by admitting the errors... He may be making corrections right now...
Thanks AthTek

Still looking for an answer and wonder if someone else knows - Does this program heave to be installed on each computer in a network or just one? Does it matter which one??? I have 3 machines on a wireless router. None hardwired. Win 7 all 3. Thanks -

for those complaining of the grammar, you are not serious. developers need not be so good in English. programs are not written in good grammar but codes which do not even have semantics. try find out. Thanks GAOTD and AthTek!

If you don't install WinPcap along with AthTek you'll get a pop up stating "unable to load WinPcap (wpcap.dll);Athtek Netwalk will not be able to monitor/capture packets. In order to monitor/capture packets, WinPcap must be installed. See http://www.winpcap.org please." I typed in the address and wouldn't you know it, I'm Oregons lucky winner of an ipad2. What a bunch of bullshit. Last time I got that took me a week to figure out how to get it out of my add/remove programs list. Everytime I tried to remove it I was some big winner and wouldn't go away.

@ AthTek & GOTD

While I thank you for the Giveaway then I will not be installing this.
I have bought more programs as a result of Giveaways , however I do not think that there is any reason to try a program of this type, that also has limited "life", that is priced way beyond what I as a(n) (advanced) home user could effort to buy when the license is running out.
Personally then I do not mind the quick responses from "AthTek" and I do not find it supiciously, I take it as what it is : communication.
A program such as "AthTek NetWalk Enterprise Edition" could be argued to be for "Enterprises" only but, from the descrption, I think that it could also be used by other people with networks - such as advanced home-users.
For this reason I think that AthTek ought to make good rethink with respect to the license conditions and make a product available for advanced home-users at a price that would seem attractive to these.
While giveawayoftheday.com is an excellent product presentation and promotion platform then I guess that the main group of visitors (and thus potential available target group) are "home users", why it also would make great sense to have a product available, at a nice price, for this user group.

At first glance, it's awesome. I'm going to read all the help files for it so I can figure out what it does, but I have an immediate question for the developer. I have a wireless network that is "open". In other words, I let my immediate neighbors have access to my internet. I do this because I often have house guests (like my 75 year old parents) who bring their laptops, and it's too much of a pain in the behind to use passwords. So my network is open to all. Can I use your software to monitor who is using my network and how much of it they are using? I don't care to know what they are doing, it's none of my business, just how much of a drain on my resources they are being.

If this software does not do that, can anyone recommend something that does? Thank you. I love GAOTD. I don't download from here very often and I post very rarely, but I always appreciate what you are doing here. I also read every comment and I appreciate the serious posters greatly, too. I learn so much from you. Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, being on the West coast, I'm late to the party as usual.

A question for those in the know.

If I install this to play around, is there any chance it can be used against me, i.e.- will it breach my firewall, open my system to attacks?

Hopefully there's someone left to answer.

I installed it on win 7 ultimate, didn't have time to test everything, but so far those are the findings:

It takes 8,3% of the CPU time slices running in background.
It shows some connections to web sites I have never been to.
It shows pockets of unknown internet traffic that can not be easily identified.
It points to internal network connection that is not in use or active but is in the list of network nodes.
The traffic numbers displayed are approximations or the average for the session and not exact traffic pocket data.

It may be useful to a tech person to test some routers and network pockets, but for home use is useless and it slows down your computer for data info you don't need or can use to improve the wide or local area networks.

In process of uninstalling on my network drive and cleaning left over pieces of this software.

Wow. AthTek is already in here commenting throughout the page. Thanks so much AthTek.

Someone mentioned that the awards on the page don't have clickable links, so I went to the websites of the company that AthTec claims so highly rewarded their software and searche for AthTec. Lo and behold, no awards. I can forgive bad English. Good or bad English is no criterion for evaluating software written by a non-English speaker. An outright lie definitely is. I wouldn't touch this one with a 10 foot pole.

Why does it not auto populate PC name and goes but IP or MAC Address? I know you can do it via entries in the Name Table but why can it not pick up that info?

I don't get it!!! someone is giving away their software to free and you turn around and bite the hand!!!! As for the grammar..who cares, my first thought was that he/she was not an English speaking person. Why bring down something you have not tried or have no intention of trying. If you don't like don't use it!! You have a choice!!! The person who said "which Google finds NO real forum posts or reviews of, is supposed to cost $499? It’s better than Wireshark (2006 to present and free) how exactly? “It takes advantages of Wireshark and achieves better performance.” What the heck? This has scam written all over it".... probably did not do a search. I found pages and pages about this software. I do not need this software but after reading all this stupidity I had to say something. Thanks GAOTD and AthTech.