10 Top IPhone Apps for IT Pros

While the frivolous iPhone apps usually get most of the media attention (yes, there really are over 175 apps that can produce rude bodily noises), there are quite a few apps that can help you do your job as an IT worker. While less notorious, they are worth your time to download and check out.

By David Strom
Fri, December 11, 2009

Computerworld — While the frivolous iPhone apps usually get most of the media attention (yes, there really are over 175 apps that can produce rude bodily noises), there are quite a few apps that can help you do your job as an IT worker. While less notorious, they are worth your time to download and check out.

Slideshow: Ten Great iPhone Hobby Apps
Slideshow: iPhone App Logos: 10 of the Best and Worst

These apps serve several purposes. They can control or interact with appliances that are part of the corporate network, monitor and remotely control your office PCs, or check your Web server. While the small screen of the iPhone can't deliver everything that your multi-monitor desktop rig can, this collection of enterprise-class applications will help iPhone-carrying IT workers manage their work lives better.

What follows is a list of 10 IT business-related iPhone apps. Most of these apps require the v3.0 firmware to work properly. I have also tried to pick those apps that are free (or nearly so).

[Also see Opinion: Putting the iPhone to work -- at work.]

Network troubleshooting/security tools

One of the more fruitful areas of app development for the iPhone is in troubleshooting common network problems, such as figuring out IP subnetting issues, pinging a particular server, looking up a traceroute to a particular destination on the Internet and similar tasks. There are also iPhone companions for larger enterprise network appliances; while most of these aren't free, there are usually demo versions that you can try out if you are thinking of buying one.

Network Utility -- Connectivity Checker v2.1

Need to do a quick check of your Web server on the Internet or look up a domain name? This is the utility for you. It comes with tools such as ping, port scan, whois queries and geographic lookup of the IP address range. It is easy to enter your host name (although a ".com" dedicated softkey would save on some keyboard taps). If/when it adds Netcat support, this will be a must-have for security professionals familiar with that tool.

There are numerous other network utilities for the iPhone, such as Traceroute, Host LookUp, iTCPing and Network Diagnostics Pro, but they are more expensive and have user interfaces that are not as elegantly designed.

Network Utility -- Connectivity Checker v2.1 from Codepacity, LLC

Price: $1 | iTunes link

Cymphonix iPhone Application v 1.1

Cymphonix iPhone gives you real-time monitoring of your enterprise Internet connection -- but only if you are connected to a Cymphonix Network Composer appliance that does deep packet inspection, intrusion detection and content filtering. It lets you access data that the appliance collects, such as bandwidth consumption, traffic by protocol and application, etc.

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