40+ Open Source and Free Software

 'Slow Internet' can be due to actual connectivity issue and in most cases due to mismanagement of bandwidth. So next time while trying to download that critical attachment if it takes forever, go to your task manger and check network performance. You might find out that bulk of your bandwidth is taken up by YouTube HD video running in background.

Here we list down some popular bandwidth management tools which can be downloaded for free.

Traffic Shaper XP is an IP based bandwidth management solution for your networks. As the name suggests it provides network administrators with traffic shaping and flow control capabilities, including automated components for Internet allocation and provision. One can install this package as gateway which would make all Internet streams flow through it. Each stream can be controlled using a combination of prioritization, guaranteed service levels and speed limiting. This system will allow full control over all types of data such as games, video, VoIP, web and e-mail.

No client software or configuration is needed except for the manager application which can be installed on any machine for remote management of the server.
www.bandwidthcontroller.com

A very simple to use utility for Windows machine which supports following operating systems: XP, 2003, Vista, 7, and 8. Once you install free version of this utility, you can check out which all processes are using bandwidth. You also come to know how much bandwidth each application is using. You can limit usage of bandwidth by simply right clicking particular application and setting priority to it> You can go further and define numerical bandwidth of each application. One point to note here is that free version has some limitation, it is limited to a maximum of 3 process priorities/limits and 3 rules at a time and has no separate network adapters management and no support for Network Grouping.
www.seriousbit.com

While the above two tools help you to actually manipulate bandwidth, this one can help you check and report bandwidth usage. You can also measure the speed of Internet or any other network connection. This type of monitoring can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks. One good feature of this free software is a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs.
www.softperfect.com

Just like Netwox this one too lets you monitor bandwidth usage of your machine; it shows details regarding the amount of downloaded and uploaded information and the downstream/upstream speed. In addition to network monitoring, the application also features a disk monitor that offers real-time information on read/write speed or used disk space. This feature should come in handy when you plan to download large files and decide their location. Application's settings allow you to customize warnings to help you better control your quota by setting limits for download and upload. www.ispmonitor.be

In case you work on a machine with more than one network adapter, it might be a good idea to know how much bandwidth is used up by each adapter. Network Meter is a network information tool that monitors any installed adapter and provides traffic details. Users are required to pick a network interface to monitor because Network Meter doesn't automatically select the one currently in use. Once Network Meter starts collecting statistics, you can see the current and the total download and upload rates, along with a simple graph to track recent activity. Session totals are also available, and so is a network properties window that displays the maximum device speed, MTU size, MAC address and network type.
www.softpedia.com

10 network monitoring & management tools

A network management application written in Java. It claims to be the world's first enterprise network management developed under an open source model. The project was registered on SourceForge on July 2000. Designed to scale to thousands of notes from one installation, OpenNMS can automatically discover network services and has an API for integration with bug tracking systems. While commercial development and support services are available through opennms.com, the project makes a point about not having a proprietary “enterprise” version.

An open source network management product backed to manage the configuration, health, and performance of network, servers and applications, all from one system. Zenoss has an integrated CMDB and it is controlled by a Web-based GUI. Custom devices like temperature sensors can also be monitored using this tool. In addition to standard uptime and performance monitoring features, Zenoss supports monitoring templates dubbed “ZenPacks”.

An independent open source network management project that has client and server apps for Linux, Unix and Windows. In addition to standard network monitoring features, NetXMS also has business impact analysis tools. The NetXMS interface is a “fat” client and there apart from a Web interface.
Both free and paid support is available for this tool.

One of the most popular open source network management tools, widely deployed by Linux users. It began life as “NetSaint” before being renamed as Nagios. The central application is called Nagios Core, with additional functionality available through Nagios Plug-ins, Front-ends and Config Tools. Regarding third-party applications and plug-ins for Nagios, there is the Nagios Exchange portal that categorises extensions across various genres.

An open source network management suite that targets itself as being suitable for Web application and virtual machine management. The commercial Hyperic was acquired by SpringSource, which was then acquired by VMWare. Hyperic features automatic discovery and records some 50,000 matrices across 75 application stacks. An Enterprise edition is available for Hyperic which includes more features than the open source edition along with commercial support.

A handy and professional network montoring utility featuring up/downtime monitoring, traffic and usage monitoring, packet sniffing, in-depth analysis and concise reporting. Its user-friendly web-based interface allows users to quickly configure network devices and sensors they wish to monitor. All common methods for network usage data acquisition are supported: SNMP and WMI, Packet Sniffing, and NetFlow. PRTG Network Monitor includes more than 30 types of sensors for all common network services (e.g. PING, HTTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP, etc.), allowing users to monitor networks for speed and failures.

A network data rate monitoring tool, NetTraffic show data rates on chart and as text label. It monitors Application log traffic and system up-time. There's a Statistics module that presents prognosis, average rates and information about current state. Tables and charts present statistical information from selected period (available: year, month, day, hour). The application can work with any network connection and works on Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2000. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.

A useful application that helps users diagnose networks and monitor their computer's network connections. It can check open ports (checking running services), scan for open resources, manage the ARP table, analyze web site, Test connections, and a few other things.

Allows you to easily monitor your network and view the status of your Internet connection. The application automatically generates a network map and enables you to test the download speed of any website. Configure the router settings, set high traffic threshold and use AirPrint to access any printer in your network! The new version now supports AirPrint for iOS 6.0, and NETGEAR Powerline devices on a Network Map.

A simple, small and Open Source tool that can monitor your network traffic, search for images and Google search terms. Etherwatch will display all found elements on your computer screen in the form of a mosaic.

10 Security Tools

The new release of this powerful anti-spam tool now supports perl-5.12 and later. The tool uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures, making it harder for spammers to identify one aspect that they can craft their messages to work around. The Anti-spam tests and configuration are stored in plain text, making it easy to configure and add new rules. It encapsulates its logic in a well-designed, abstract API so it can be integrated anywhere in the email stream.

An open source anti-virus engine designed for detecting Trojans, viruses, malware and other malicious threats. It is the de facto standard for mail gateway scanning. It provides a high performance mutli-threaded scanning daemon, command line utilities for on demand file scanning, and an intelligent tool for automatic signature updates.

A Linux-based firewall distribution geared towards home and SOHO users, so its web-interface is extremely user-friendly.

A Free firewall that includes its own security-hardened GNU/Linux operating system and an easy-to-use web interface. It can convert a redundant PC into a hardened Internet firewall device.

Yet another firewall solution for small businesses. Like IPCop and SmoothWall Express, Untangle is free to use. Unlike others however, Untangle also offers paid plans that grant more control and more web filtering options. What also sets Untangle apart is that it does not require any operating system to run. It just requires a dedicated PC, and during the installation process it will install its own operating system.

Similar to Untangle, Endian Firewall Community can turn an old PC into a unified threat management (UTM) appliance that provides a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, content filtering, and a VPN. Pre-configured appliances and support are also available for fee.

A virtual private network, or VPN, is an excellent cost-saving tool in its own right. A VPN allows a business to use pre-existing infrastructure of the internet to host and access a private organizational network. This means a business no longer has to pay for costly private lines. OpenVPN takes the savings even further by eliminating the need to pay for expensive proprietary VPN software. It is easy to use and available on every platform imaginable.

Create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or drive on a Windows system. It can also be used to encrypt a portable hard drive or USB flash drive. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

This completely eliminates a file so that it cannot be read even with digital forensic tools. It overwrites data several times with random patterns erasing all traces of sensitive information. It works on Windows.

10 Mail Servers

A free e-mail server for Microsoft Windows. It's used by Internet service providers, companies, governments, schools and enthusiasts in all parts of the world. It supports common e-mail protocols (IMAP, SMTP and POP3) and can easily be integrated with many existing web mail systems. It has flexible score-based spam protection and can attach to your virus scanner to scan all incoming and outgoing email.

An open source SMTP and POP3 mail transfer agent and NNTP news server written entirely in Java. IMAP support has been added as of preview version 3.0-M2. It now requires Java 1.5 or later.

An integrated mail/groupware server based on open commodity protocols such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, Webmail, calendaring, and mailing list services.
Zimbra: An open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration.

Implements SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4 rev 1 protocols. It provides support for rich application message processing via pluggable mail filters and agents, as well as full handling of virtual domains for the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 protocols. Since the server is based on the Dwarf framework, it also shares its common design principles and features-simplicity, high modularity and extensibility, authentication and authorization, XML-based configuration, logging and remote management. With Dwarf Mail Server you get a powerful email server that supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols.

Provides robust SMTP, POP3 and web mail services for Microsoft Windows servers. Simple to install, with powerful administration software means that your mail server will be up and running quickly. This edition is FREE, contains no spyware or adware, for both personal and commercial usage, with no time or user restrictions.

A ZERO COST, full fledged, full-featured mail server. All used packages in this are free and open source based, provided by the Linux/BSD distribution venders you trust.

An open source IMAP, SMTP server written in Java, designed with ease of installation and configuration in mind. Hedwig enables storage of mail message headers in a relational database (MySQL) and mail messages in a file system.

A setup for a (small) enterprise mail server using standard GPL components

A communications program that deserves to be more well known. It supports POP3, IMAP4, NNTP & RSS protocols. Installation simply involves copying the files to the Windows Mobile.

6 Virtualization Software

A virtualization environment for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows XP Professional Edition and Windows XP Service Pack 2. It works on x86 servers or workstations and is available in 32- or 64-bit versions.

Open source software for running Windows or Linux on a Macintosh. It allows users to switch between guest PCs and restart guest PCs at any point. Q also enables users to exchange files between the host operating system and the guest. Q is based on the QEMU open source CPU emulator. You need to be careful about using Q – according to the Web site, it is still alpha software.

Short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine, KVM is not as widely deployed as other open source hypervisors, but its stature is growing rapidly. KVM is a full virtualisation hypervisor and can run both Windows and Linux guests. With the kernel component of KVM included in Linux since kernel 2.6.20, KVM can claim a good level of integration with the rest of the operating system.

began life as a Microsoft-funded startup at the University of Cambridge and has risen to become the “de facto standard” in Linux hypervisors. Xen supports paravirtualisation and “hardware assisted” virtualisation for modified and un-modified guests, respectively.

We will create seperate computing environments by Virtualising the native operating system with each environment acting as a dedicated server.Each environment (or VPS)act as different server with different network and files and processes.

is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.