GUI - Making an IP Scanner with built in mail notification.

[Siggasen]

Hello.

I just joined this Forum today, after months of back and forth between work and AutoIt.
I come to you, the community of AutoIt, with an idea that i have seen many examples of.

I wish to create and IP scanner for internal network(s), which includes the power to send an e-mail notification to spesific recipients whenever there is X amount of downtime (say 20 seconds to set an example), to our network administator.

Though I make a living of working with IT, i have yet to learn how to program. I have made simple GUI's for installing a set amount of application (runtimes, MSE, Winzip and so forth), but i wish to expand my knowledge and understanding of AutoIt.

I have seen (can't find the link to it) an example of an IP Scanning tool, which is my inspiration to start looking into the depths of AutoIt. It allowed the user to choose which network to scan (if connected to multiple networks through VPN or 2 or more network adapters), and it scans every IP adress (192.168.xxx.1 - 192.168.xxx.254) and specified the hostname connected to the IP. This is simply brilliant.

My question to this community is this: Have you ever seen an IP Scanner for multiple networks, WITH e-mail notification whenever there is a drop?

I am willing to make everything from scratch, as I am determined to make this work.
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A short summary of my envirement:

Multiple virtual servers spread over 3 HOST servers.

Virtual servers servers the roles of AD controller, File / application server or Terminal Servers.

Naturally, there are also some Exchange servers available for use to this project.

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I thank you in advance for any ideas or comments you might have to this post.

//Siggas

Edited October 23, 2013 by Siggasen

[lordofthestrings]

Just pinging doesn't tell you enough. you need a connection mechanism to the specific service and that's allready covered for microsoft environments with MOM (2005 or higher) if you want free sollution, NAGIOS is the way to go.

pinging is simple

you have your IP Address,

e.g.
192.168.*.20 with Subnetmask 255.255.252.0 (that means 4 classes of 255 IP Adresses are available) and gateway 192.168.*.1

you want to ping

192.168.*.*

212.10.*.*

and 10.0.0.*

what can be seen in your local subnet stays there, what's outside your subnet will be forwarded to your gateway so there's no magic code that needs to be written.

also I would really not advise you to "auto-mail" in case of events, as this can easily become spam.

[Siggasen]

@Priodigy

Thank you for your responce to my thread.

I will take a quick look at Nagios, as you suggested.

As for the auto-mail i just had the idea floating in my head.

Think of the scenario:

You constantly ping your servers, once a server drops you know that it has lost link, as notified by "SPAM" mail (dedicated mailbox for this purpose).
It would tell you the following:

1. The server is NOT running.
2. The server IS running, but there is no link.

It could serve well in a small lab envirement like my own - how ever, if there are freeware that serves this purpose, its certainly an option.

Just made this thread to "feel the water", see if people found it interesting enough for me to actaully write the code nesessary and share

Again, thanks for your reply!

//Siggas

[orbs]

as you can imagine, this issue has been addressed many times, and there are shelf products that do it, so unless you are really bored, there is no point of re-inventing the wheel.

Nagios, although very powerful, is Linux-based, which may intimidate those not experienced with Linux.

personally i found this very useful:

http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude

[Siggasen]

Thanks for the advice, Orbs!