Cheops, developed by Mark Spencer, is intended as a network management tool. Its chief functioning features include:

• Automatic network scans to add all hosts present on the network
• A graphical network map of each host that shows the default gateway for the network
• The ability to provide crude port scans for each host
• Operating system identification
• Active monitoring of remote systems to see if the host is up, or if a particular service is up and running
• The ability to manually add or delete a host from the map
• The ability to add an entire IP network or DNS domain to the map, and then have Cheops automatically add new hosts to the map
• The use of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to query hosts
• Resolution of DNS names (including reverse DNS lookup)
• Use of ping or traceroute on each host on the map
• Ability to access the network services (e.g., FTP, Telnet, and SSH) provided by a host on the map

Billed as a graphical network neighborhood, Cheops is related to applications such as HP OpenView. HP OpenView is a sophisticated, expensive graphical front end that uses SNMP, a protocol that allows you to monitor remote...