NetLens
Port scanning and latency checks for one host, with no admin rights needed.
Free right now — no account, no card
Preview
1 interface design, then a screenshot of it running. Drag, scroll or use the arrows.
Free while we’re in preview
Get NetLens
Port scanning and latency checks for one host, with no admin rights needed.
The Mac button is for Apple Silicon. On an older Intel Mac, get this one instead.
One file, both ways. Double-click it for the window. Run the same file from a command prompt with arguments and it behaves as the command-line tool, because the engine is inside it. Nothing else to download and nothing to keep beside it.
Early preview. The window has been built and run, but not yet on a real Windows PC or Mac, so expect rough edges. The engine underneath it is fully tested.
- One file — no installer
- Reaches only what you point it at
- Source code published below
Free while in preview. It isn’t signed yet, so Windows or macOS will ask you to confirm the first time you open it. At launch, NetLens is included in every plan along with the rest of the range.
About that “ping”
NetLens has a ping command and it is not ICMP. Real echo requests need a raw socket, which needs root or administrator on every platform, which would mean elevating just to check whether a host answers. Instead it times the TCP handshake, the same substitute tcping uses, and the first line of output says so every run. The numbers read higher than real ping and aren’t comparable with it.
scan
netlens scan example.com --ports 20-25,80,443 dials each port through a bounded worker pool, so a big range doesn’t exhaust anything. Each port lands in one of three buckets: OPEN with its connect time, CLOSED where the connection was actively refused, or FILTERED where nothing came back at all, which usually means a firewall dropping packets in silence.
ping
Give it several hosts and each gets its own block: min, average and max over the attempts that succeeded, plus loss percentage. A refusal counts as loss, same as a timeout, because either way no handshake completed.
Per-application bandwidth accounting and live firewall visibility need privileged OS interfaces. They’re not in this binary and nothing here pretends otherwise.
Reading on the job itself
- How to find out what is using your bandwidth Meter per host, not per application. "The browser used 40 GB" is not useful; "40 GB went to one video host"...
Advanced & technical details Command-line builds, source code, checksums and a recorded session — for developers and IT teams
A working CLI prototype of the diagnosis half of the job: TCP port scanning and TCP-connect-based latency probing (a portable proxy for ping, since real ICMP needs a raw socket). Per-app bandwidth, firewall visibility, and WFP-based route diagnostics need OS-privileged APIs and are on the roadmap.
Naming status
Working name only — brand verdict **RENAME** (High). Collision: NetLens. Rename before launch.
What it draws on
Existing paid software whose best ideas shaped this program: GlassWire Premium, NetLimiter, PingPlotter Professional, NetWorx.
Command line
There is nothing extra to install. The program you download is the command-line tool as well: give it arguments instead of double-clicking it and it runs as one, with its output on your terminal. The standalone builds below are the same engine on its own, for machines where you would rather not ship a window at all.
NetLens - TCP port scanning and TCP-connect latency probing
USAGE:
netlens <command> [arguments]
COMMANDS:
scan TCP-connect port scanner
ping TCP-connect latency probe (NOT ICMP ping)
help Show this help message
Run 'netlens <command> -h' for command-specific help.
NOTE: "ping" here measures TCP connect time, not ICMP echo. True ICMP
ping requires a raw socket and administrator/root privileges on every
target platform, which is incompatible with a portable, unprivileged
CLI. See README.txt for details and roadmap items (firewall visibility,
per-app bandwidth, WFP route diagnostics) that need OS-privileged APIs.Recorded from the shipped binary, not written by hand.
Source
Every file the program is built from:
console.go · console_test.go · guided.go · main.go
SHA-256 checksums · build instructions & scope notes · full build plan