Many people are ok with leaving their network open for others to use. But you might be curious to find out how often others are on your network and using your internet connection. Network Magic will show you this for free thru our Network Map and Intruder Alert features. Just download and install it. You will need to leave that PC on so it can monitor your network.

Make sure “Intruder Alert” is turned on in Network Magic
In the "Tools" menu under options you can find this dialog box.

Intruder Alert does three things for you .

1. Automatically Marks Intruders.
It marks every new device that comes on your network as an intruder on the Network Map. Even if they come on your network while your away, Network Magic will show you the device and details it has learned about that device. It will even show you the MAC address, which is the unique identifier of that devices network card. You can use the device MAC Address and your router’s MAC Address Filter feature to block that device.

2. Tracks Intruders Time on Your Network
It tracks the intruder in the “What’s New” Tab. It will show in read the times that each intruder has come on and off the network

3. Prevents Intruder from Using Network Magic for auto Folder or Printer Sharing.
If the Intruder is using Network Magic and it is marked as an “intruder” then Network Magic will not enable the intruder to participate in Network Magic Shared Folders or Printer Sharing. However, it doesn’t prevent an intruder from using other means to see the folders you have shared out or accessing your printer. I recommend not sharing folders on your network if you are leaving it open for others to join.

What about security on an open wireless network?
I also strongly suggest you make sure you have your software firewall turned on because you will be exposing your PCs to risk when others connect to your network. Network Magic will alert you if your software firewall is not enabled. You will have to configure you software firewall manually if you wish to block an intruder from your shared folders. Having said all this I would recommend that you turn on Intruder Protection in Network Magic even if you want to let your neighbor or friends on. You can just treat them as part of your network and still block unwanted guest.

Posted by Tim - CEO at 02:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you ever experienced a slow website or browsing experience and wondered why? At www.networkmagic.com we have a great tool to help you discover why the internet is slow called www.speedmeterpro.com. It works with Network Magic and will show you the bandwidth consumption of each PC and your router.

The internet can be slow for several reasons:
1. The website you are loading is slow. You might try some other sites to see how fast they come up. Google is usually a good one to try to see how fast your connection might be. If it's slow to come up then it very likely is not the websites you’re visiting, but something else.
2. The internet service you use is slow. You can find how fast your internet service is at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest. It's a pretty cool test and will give you a sense of your actual bandwidth for upload and download. You can compare that to what your broadband provider tells you.
3. Intruders or neighbors using your bandwidth. To see who else is on your network you can get use the Network Magic service to scan your network. You can signup at Network Magic and you will see a map of who is on your network. You can then kick off intruders if you have a supported router for that feature.
4. Something on your network is consuming a lot of bandwidth. This is where www.speedmeterpro.com can help by showing you bandwidth consumption by PC and for your network. The typical bandwidth hogs that slow your network down are applications like Bittorrent, XBOX live, downloading streaming video or just large downloads.
5. It's a bad time of day. If you use cable internet service like Comcast and it's a time of day when your street may have a lot of people using the service at one time. This will slow down your service because there is only so much bandwidth for the segment. Not a lot you can do about this except switch to DSL where you get a dedicated amount of bandwidth.

I am curious to know how many of you have this problem because there is more we can do to help in these situations. Drop a comment to let me know.

Posted by Tim - CEO at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We have been working hard to make your network work better for you and hopefully not be too much of a drain on your time. We know it is not perfect so let us know how we can make it better. There are also a lot of new things to discover in the latest Network Magic and we will be here to help you find your way. Communicating with us is easy! Reply to any of our Blogs (Network Garage, From the CEO, The Engineers) or contact our support and let us know how it’s working for you.

Posted by Tim - CEO at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)