Keep Connected lets you monitor service availability, track downtime, and probe machines
for supported services. Keep Connected is fully configurable, and includes its own built-in
script processor and editor. This feature allows you to write your own TCP/IP scripts for
testing custom services, or modify the built-in scripts to match your specific needs.
Control Panel applet settings showing
connections to an NTP service and a SAP R/3 service
Keep Connected provides three notification methods, so busy administrators can keep on top
of system status at all times.
Audible alarm - Keep Connected can beep the PC speaker either until you
have reset the alarm or until the connection is restored.
Email alert - Keep Connected can send email, either to the default administrator
or to a specific individual (or list of individuals), when a connection goes down.
Optionally, Keep Connected can send another email when the connection is restored.
Run program - Keep Connected can run a program of your choice, with optional context-
specific command-line parms, when a connection goes down. By default, the program
is the built-in NET SEND command, but you may use any program you want. Use this feature
with a command-line pager or email program to customize your alert strategy.
Keep Connected provides real-time statistics on all connections, viewable from the Control
Panel applet. Keep Connected also records uptime and downtime in the Event Viewer log,
and optionally saves detail transaction records in a log file. Keep Connected can be used
to keep a dial-on-demand router or modem activated, or as part of your overall LAN/WAN
monitoring system.
Requirements
Win95, Win98, NT 3.51, NT 4.x, or Windows 2000. Both Alpha and Intel supported on NT.
Setup and Configuration
Installation
Keep Connected runs as a service on either Windows NT4/2K/XP/2003/Vista/2008 or Win95/Win98. (On
Windows NT4/2K/XP/2003/Vista/2008, you must be logged on using an account with administrative privileges to
install or remove the service.)
The program will automatically determine your system type and install itself correctly.
After you download the zip file, unzip the contents to a temporary directory on your
machine (or a shared network directory), then double-click setup.exe and click
the Install button.
If Keep Connected is already installed, the Install button will not
be present. Instead, setup will present an Upgrade button.
If older versions of any of the distribution files
already exist on your machine, the program will upgrade them automatically when you
select Upgrade.
In some cases, it may be necessary for you to reboot your machine to complete
installation or an upgrade. If so, you will be prompted to restart.
Keep Connected installs to the system directory. On Win95/Win98, this is
usually c:\windows\system. On Windows NT4/2K/XP/2003/Vista/2008, it is usually either c:\windows\system32
or c:\winnt\system32.
Removal
Run setup.exe again, and click the Remove button on the setup dialog.
You may also run keepcon.exe /remove from the system directory. The Remove
button will only be enabled if setup determines that the service is already installed.
Upgrading
To upgrade to a new version, download and unzip the new version to a temporary
directory. Double-click the new setup.exe and click the Upgrade button.
The Upgrade button will only be visible if setup determines that an older version
of the service is already installed. Otherwise, only the Install and Remove
buttons will be shown.
Command-line Options
Although not generally needed, you may specify the following command-line options when
running setup.exe or keepcon.exe. You may use a dash or a forward slash before the option. Slashes
are shown below for clarity. Options may also be specified by just the first letter.
keepcon.exe /version or setup.exe /version -- displays the program's version and copyright information.
setup.exe /install -- forces installation.
keepcon.exe /remove or setup.exe /remove-- forces removal.
To assist with automated installations, the program also supports the /quiet command-line switch.
You may use the /quiet switch in conjunction with /remove, /install, or /upgrade.
When the /quiet switch is specified, the program only displays dialog boxes if errors are encountered;
otherwise, the program performs the requested function and exits immediately. This feature makes it easy to
handle installations or upgrades network-wide with a simple batch file.
Version History
2.1.b.20001226 - fixed bug in email notification selection where the
send-to-specific-person information was not retained properly.
2.1.b.20000528 - added support for multiple email servers and non-standard SMTP ports.
2.1.b.19991024 - version 2 release.
1.0.b.19960422 - updated 19960302 to match code used in other programs.
When the Keep Connected service is installed and running, you can configure and control the service from
its Control Panel applet. Any changes made will take effect immediately, you do not need to stop and
restart the service.
Keep Connected Control Panel applet
Email Setup
If you intend to use the email alerting features of Keep Connected, you must set the Email Defaults.
Click the Email Setup box on the Control Panel applet to set the SMTP server and Default Email
Recipient to be used for email alerts. You must specify an SMTP server accessible from the machine
running Keep Connected, and a valid email address. This is the address used whenever the Default
Recipient item is selected when setting up the alerting options for individual monitors (see above).
Email Setup Screen
Email names may be either plain or decorated. A plain name is one like person@place.com. A decorated name is one like "Tech Support" <techsupport@yourdomain.com>. The
quotation marks are required if the decorated portion of the name contains space characters.
Selecting the Services to Monitor
Keep Connected can monitor many systems and services simultaneously. Use the Add Host button to
enter the DNS name or IP address of the system you wish to monitor. You can then select the service script
you wish to use to monitor the system (see the Scripts section below for more information
on using and customizing scripts.
The Add Host dialog
If you only want to see if your machine keeps a TCP/IP connection to a particular server, select the ICMP/Ping
script, which will test to be sure that the machine is answering TCP/IP requests. To monitor not
only the server running, but the actual availability of specific services or applications, pick the
script that corresponds to the service you wish to watch.
For example, to be sure your link to your ISP is up, you can enter the DNS name or IP address of one of
their routers and choose the ICMP/Ping script. Keep Connected will generate an alert when ever that
router becomes unreachable.
For other critical systems, it's not enough to know if the machine is turned on, you really need to
know if the application is actually operating. For example, to get notified if your outgoing email server
application crashes, you would select the SMTP script, which regularly tries to talk directly to the
SMTP service using the SMTP protocol and generates an alert if the service doesn't respond correctly.
Using Probe
On the Add Hosts dialog, there is a Probe button for doing a quick port scan of the listed machine to
see what IP services are answering. This helps you quickly determine which services are running and
available to be monitored on that system. You can also use it to determine if there are services running
on that system that you don't want to have running.
Sample results of a Probe showing that a web server is running
Scripts
Keep Connected includes default scripts for monitoring most common IP services. These are maintained
on the Scripts dialog page, which you get to by clicking the Scripts button on the
Control Panel applet.
You may edit the default scripts if you wish to do things like change the IP port being used to monitor
a standard IP service (for example, to change the IRC port being monitored from 6667 to 7777), or you
may create your own custom scripts for other applications using the included script language editor. You
can display the individual script commands by clicking the Help button when in the editor.
The POP3 service script displayed in the Scripts Editor
The default service scripts included with Keep Connected are:
ICMP/Ping
Discard
Domain Time II
DNS
Echo
Finger
FTP
HTTP/Web server
HTTPS/Secure web server
IMAP4
IMAP4/SSL
IRC/Internet Relay Chat
LDAP
LDAP/SSL
Lotus Notes
MSMQ
NBSession/Microsoft Networking
NNTP/News Server
NNTP/SSL
NTP/Network Time Protocol
POP3
POP3/SSL
SAP R/3
SMTP/outgoing email
SQL Server
Systat
Telnet
WINS
Whois
Setting Options for Individual Monitors
Once you have added the host you wish to monitor, it will appear in the list of monitored systems. To set the
various options for a particular monitor, highlight the host you wish to modify in the monitored hosts list by
clicking on it.
You will notice the various main sections on the Control Panel (Options, Status, and Statistics) now indicate
they are referring to the host you clicked on above. Changes you make to these sections will apply only to the
monitor you selected. This allows you to easily specify different settings and actions for each individual
host monitor.
Keep this method in mind when working with the Control Panel applet. For example, say you
have two servers being monitored (Server A and Server B) and their monitors both specify to beep the PC speaker
when alerts are triggered. Server B has just crashed, and Keep Connected is faithfully beeping.
When you first pull up Keep Connected to see what's failed, Server A will be highlighted by default
(since it is listed first). This means that the Status light in the Status section will be green, and the
Statistics won't show any errors. How can this be? Server B is down and the alarm is clearly ringing.
Of course, you are only seeing the options for Server A since it is highlighted. Clicking on Server B will
change the display to show the Status light for Server B is red, and the statistics section will be showing
the Server B error status.
Logging options
You can set Keep Connected to log the details of events (time of connection failures, service restored,
length of outage, etc.) to the Windows NT4/2K/XP/2003/Vista/2008 event logs, or to the Keep Connected log file
(%systemroot%\system32\keepcon.log) or both.
Check Intervals
You can specify how often Keep Connected will check a monitored system for its availability. There are
two settings - the first specifies how often the check will occur under normal conditions. The second
option (Error-state) specifies how often checks should be done when an outage is discovered. Typically,
you will want to set the Normal interval to a reasonably relaxed schedule so that you are not polling
the system heavily during normal use (the default is 120 seconds). However, if an error occurs, you
probably want Keep Connected to check quite often in order to document exactly how long the outage lasts
and catch any short, intermittent up and down behaviors. The error-state default is 3 seconds.
ICMP Options
If you have selected the ICMP/Ping script for a monitor, you will have the option of fine-tuning the
way pings are handled. You can set the number of pings, the number of retries on failure, and the
length a ping should take before timing out. You can also set the service to automatically extend
the timeout period when an error occurs to allow for possible very high latencies.
Actions to take when connection fails
Keep Connected can be configured to take a variety of actions automatically when a connection fails.
Keep Connected can take any (or all) of the following actions:
Beep the PC Speaker
Send an Email Alert
Run a program that you specify (keep in mind that some NT programs require a logged-on user to operate).
The Actions to take when connection fails screen
Note: In order to use Email Alerts, a default email account and SMTP server must first be specified on the
Email Setup dialog screen (see the Email Settings section abovew for more
information on configuring the default email information.
The Send Email Alert item on the Actions to take when connection fails dialog allows you to enable
or disable email alerts for the specific connection you are configuring. It also lets you override the
default email address to send email to a different person.
For example, say you are a system administrator responsible for multiple servers and want to get
notified when any of your servers are down. You would set your own email address as the default email
address in the main Email Setup dialog and any connection you are monitoring will send you an email
alert if you have Default Recipient selected. However, if you'd rather have Notes server alerts sent
directly to the Notes administrator instead, simply specify the Notes admin's email address in the
Specific Person field when setting up the Notes monitor. Email Alerts from any other servers
you are monitoring will contine to go to the default email address.
Remotely Controlling other systems running Keep Connected
If you have the Keep Connected service running on several different machines (i.e. on your workstation, on a machine in the
New York Computer Room and also on a machine in San Fransico office computer room, you can set the monitoring
and alerting options for each of these systems remotely. Use the Connect button to specify which machine
you wish to control. This will pull up the Control Panel applet on the remote system so that you can make the
desired changes.
You must have both a Microsoft Networking (NBT) connection to the remote machine, and administrator rights on
the remote machine in order to remotely control the service.
