Reviewer, 2009-06-23 09:37:00

TracePlus Winsock is an application layer performance and data analysis plus diagnostic tool for network applications, primarily targeted towards the Windows platform.

Features: TracPlus Winsock is an application for network application programmers that allows them to view the interactions between the application layer program and the Winsock API layer. Similarly, it also shows interactions between the application and WININET, RAS, and Winsock extensions. TracePlus Winsock has in-built support for COM and ActiveX objects as well as .NET support. So essentially any application programmed on a Windows platform and using the network can be used with TracePlus Winsock. Debugging is done by looking at the function list that TracePlus Winsock generates. This also provides information about error messages if any and so on. Each and every call made to Winsock, WININET, RAS, Win32 file I/O, WSAAsyncxxx() are monitored and reported along with time (with a microsecond accuracy). It has an extensive support structure include support for IPv6, Novell IPX, I/O ports. The best part is that all this is available with no change required in the application. For example, you can view this information not only for your own application but also for existing Win32 applications – which in turn can improve your understanding of the ways in which the underlying Winsock, WININET, RAS APIs are being used.

There are three different views of current developments available: a DNS lookup view displays statistics on the calls that have been made by the given application; Connect Time view displays statistics on the time taken to connect to a server to respond to a connection request by the application; and the main Session view displays in detail information about each packet sent or received by the application during a session, from the PC to a different host machine.

Overall: A pretty nice utility and performs the required function well. The application designers and programmers should work to make it more user friendly, mainly by improving the user interface (both in terms of look-and-feel as well as making easier to use). Not much else to complain about here.