"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Project Summary Project Type: Network Screensaver Released: 2009

Requirements -Windows 9x, XP, Vista (x86 & x64) -1GHz Processor -64MB RAM -1MB of free hard disk space -32MB OpenGL Compliant Video Card

NetSwarm Overview

NetSwarm monitors all network activity which your computer receives and then generates a swarm of the network nodes (machines/devices). This process visually demonstrates how your network communicates within itself and the outside world. NetSwarm can be ran as a monitoring utility (Stand Alone EXE) or as a screen saver.

NetSwarm uses colour coded nodes (circles) to inform you of the type of traffic you have communicating on your network. A green node indicates an internal IP address (including VPN addresses), where as a light blue node indicates a remote address. Yellow nodes represent either a broadcast or multicast address. NetSwarm can be configured through the settings window to ignore external IP addresses.

NetSwarm also changes the colour of the links (lines) between nodes depending on what transport protocol is being utilized between the two nodes. Red links indicate TCP traffic. Green links indicate ICMP traffic and blue links represent UDP traffic. If a mixture of protocols are being utilized NetSwarm will morph the colour of the link to represent the ratio of use for each protocol.

NetSwarm makes use of WinPCap for packet sniffing, the install for WinPCap is included within the NetSwarm setup. Please note that if your network consists of only routers and switches the results of NetSwarm will only display traffic which is from or destined for your computer. This is due to the nature of how switches and routers function.

Your firewall will prompt you to allow NetSwarm access to the internet. This is not required, however you are suggested to allow connection. It uses the internet to find the names of each IP it discovers and to check if an updated version of NetSwarm is available for download.

Development Team
Dominic Black	Development
RedTechie	Beta Testing
Timothy Oliver	Beta Testing
Jason Griffith	Beta Testing
Andrew Leiper	Beta Testing
Robert Jenks	Beta Testing