July 23rd, 2007
Psst. Want to know everything on your network?
Having divested their proprietary wireless security tool, the folks at Network Chemistry are using the open source process to develop a universal network scanning and reporting system.
What CTO Chris Waters calls Project Wishbone is based on RogueScanner, a scanning tool originally created to find viruses and other rogue programs.
Now the GPL software is being adapted to detect everything on your network — hardware, software, switches, routers, the lot.
“It’s a lot of data, and it tends to live in many different silos, managed by different systems, with different ways of accessing the information,” Waters said. “We want to break those walls and make it available.”
The result will apply lessons from search, consumer sites and social networking to IT management. Waters hopes the community will enhance the scanner, and he’ll be able to sell the software as a service.
“RogueScanner helps people find their devices and know what they are. It is released under the GPL, and it’s on top of this foundation we’ll build the search engine.
“It will be the spider that gathers the information, and part of its system is an accurate engine for telling you what devices are.” An early version could be out by the end of summer.
One more thing. They’re looking for a new name. Network Chemistry may go with the part of the company being sold. Project Wishbone sounds sort of 1970s college football-ish, and you don’t want software that sounds like salad dressing.
So it spiders your network, and lets you see everything on it through a search box. Name that project!
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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