NMTopUsers Expert: Community to the Rescue

We have some great new updates for the Top Users expert! But this time, I had nothing to do with it… Bob Sledge contacted me about extending and fixing the Top Users Expert. And so with these updates, we now have an improved Expert for Network Monitor.

What’s New with Top Users

The biggest update is that there is now only one version. You can switch between the Endpoint and Conversation mode from within the expert. You also have the ability to open new captures directly from the tool. Here’s a list of the other changes:

  • Conversation mode will show a percentage when viewing a single address type, like Ethernet or IPv4.
  • The sorting has been improved when changing address types.
  • There was a bug in the send/receive statistics that is now fixed.
  • Command line arguments are case insensitive now.
  • The DumpRow command line feature wasn’t working and is now fixed.
  • Data is now right justified properly.
  • Formatting for numeric data has been improved.
  • Address columns are auto sized correctly.
  • Status bar shows start/end frame times for entire trace.
  • Converted to VS2010

Bob’s Footsteps

To get Bob involved, we first had him sign a typical open source document electronically. This basically is to protect the Outercurve Foundation. After this we discussed on the phone the changes he was proposing because he wanted to make sure they were sound. We added Bob as a contributor to the CodePlex project, and the first step he made was to branch the project. Once his changes were made in the branch, I synced and verified that the changes made sense with regards to the original architecture. I also made some small modifications to the version and build process. Then we merged the project back and we were done.

Contributions to any of our projects can be as little as a feature request or bug report.  If you want to go further you can suggest code to fix or address a feature.  When you get more involved in a project there are opportunities like becoming a contributor or even coordinator.  Issue reports and discussions can be started for the project you are interested in. The list of projects is listed on the main CodePlex Project page. Also, if you have your own ideas for Experts you'd like to get started with in open source; we'd welcome you to join us as well. Just drop us a line by going to our Outercurve Project Page, and send email to the project lead.

With a Little Help from my Friends

It’s awesome to see contributions, like these from Bob Sledge, for a tool that is used by many. This is exactly the reason we wanted to make these experts open source. Perhaps this will inspire others to put their two cents in.