Connection Manager

CnxManager

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Welcome to the CnxManager homepage. Here, you will find information about CnxManager and its plugins.

What is CnxManager ?

CnxManager is an application running under Windows©® 32bits which allows you to launch actions when a network connection becomes actives.
Network connection either means through a local area network (LAN) or through a modem.
Its main usage is embedded on a laptop which you connect to different networks throughout the week.
For instance, during the day, you may be at the University using their DHCP server, while you use a modem to connect from home. And of course, the settings to use Internet in such conditions may be different. For instance, you may have to use a proxy while at the university, but you don't when you're at home. Further, to send emails, you need a different SMTP server depending on the location.
And you know how painfull it is to change all these settings every time you reconnect.
Then CnxManager is what you need. Indeed, it monitors the available connections and as soon as one is active, it activates the actions you associated with it. So for instance, to deal with the ever changing SMTP servers, here is what you do :
Of course, there are many more things you can do, as you'll discover in the next section and in the documentation.

CnxManager is released by Olivier Sannier under the Mozilla Public License 1.1 which can be found here : http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html
Any feedback is more than welcome, especially if you use CnxManager in a professional environment.

What actions are available ?

CnxManager comes with a number of embedded actions described below:

Action name
 		Description

Application Launcher
 Launches an application, or opens a document (if it is associated to an application)

Proxy Settings Changer
 Changes the proxy settings in Internet Explorer and Netscape (6 and above)

Port Redirection
 Redirects a connection to the local machine to a distant server on a given port. This is really useful to redirect SMTP requests from your email software to a different SMTP server according to the connection. You just need to change your email software settings to use localhost and the Connection Manager wil do the rest. More details in the documentation.
If your SMTP server requires authentication, have a look at the SMTP Redirection action.

SMTP Redirection
 This is a specialized port redirection which allows you to change some parameters in the SMTP commands passed to a server. At this date, all you can change are the AUTH parameter to the FROM command and the login used with the AUTH LOGIN command

Network Resource Manager
 Connects or disconnects a network resource such as a drive or a printer.

Internal Redirections
 This set of redirection is a bit special as it doesn't connect to a distant server but still answers the connection requests. This can be useful to remind you that you are not connected to Internet.
The following protocols are supported : HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP

And even more actions are available through the use of plugins. These ones are available for download from here:

Action name
 		Description
 		Plugin

Password Monitor
 Monitors the list of opened windows and if one corresponds, answers it with a username and a password. This is useful as some applications don't allow the user to store the username and password permanently.
 PasswordMonitor.dll

Time Counter
 If you want to know how much time you spent using a connection, this is the action you need. You can keep track of the time in a log file
 Counters.dll

Traffic Counter
 If you want to know what traffic you generated while using a connection, this is the action you need. You can keep track of the traffic in a log file
 Counters.dll