isBooth: Passion for crossword puzzles

• isBooth Crosswords: your preferred webapp
  • Play comfortably at home on your Desktop or your Console (Xbox, Playstation)
  • Play offline on the beach or in the train, wherever you want with your Tablet, Notebook or Smartphone
  • Choose traditional crosswords, diagrammless skeleton crosswords, fill-in crosswords and crusadex, crosswords research, or facilitated crosswords
  • Choose your size → from the small 6x6 for Smartphone to the very large 22x22 for Desktops
  • Enjoy easy readability, correction and error detection
  • Enjoy the same ease as when playing Scandinavian crosswords (arrowords)
  • Select your preferred writer and theme among our lists
  • Choose among thousands of crosswords in several languages
  • Save the planet: you cannot print the crosswords
• Several crosswords variants
• Traditional crosswords
  • a traditional crossword puzzle requires to find all the letters of a grid of squares, where the words cross in the across and down directions
  • the words are separated by black shaded squares, each word is numbered and for each word a corresponding clue or hint is given
• Diagramless or skeleton crosswords
  • in the diagramless or skeleton crosswords, the player also need to find where the black shaded squares are located
  • the clues are given in order for each column and each row, insted of being numbered for each word
  • within the isBooth application you need to use the '#' key to input shaded squares (or the key for the number 3)
• Crusadex (or cruzadex)
  • in the crusadex the clues are given either as unordered list (isbooth case) or by the length of the clue, with no reference to what word their correspond to
  • in most crusadex the player needs also to add black shaded squares to the grids; in the isBooth application all the black shaded squares of the crusadex are given from the beginning
  • this game is reserved to expert players
• Crosswords research
  • the crosswords research is the most difficult of our crosswords
  • it consists in a diagrammless crossword with the clues given without any order, where only some pre-inserted letters give hints to the player to start building a solution
• Facilitated crosswords
  • for beginners: some pre-inserted letters simplify the solution of a traditional crossword
• Scandinavian crosswords or arrowords
  • very popular, this crosswords show short clues inside the black shaded squares of a traditional crossword, reducing the reading effort of the player
  • isBooth do not provide this game, as on a computer screen, we can get even easier reading conditions with the more flexible traditional crossword setup
• More information and references about crosswords
  • Wikipedia Crosswords
• Help us to spread awareness about isbooth
• Games, enigma and curiosities - Sitemap
  • Daily Crossword
  • Crosswords Online
  • Sudoku
  • Jigsaw Puzzles
  • Word-Fit-Puzzles
  • Geographic Quiz
  • Proverbs Puzzles
  • Minesweeper
  • Fractal Icons
  • Enigmatic Calculus
  • Spider Solitaire
  • Chinese Flashcards

Smokeping Alternative For Windows -

Type: Commercial (free tier limited to 2 devices)

Features:

Pros: Great for hybrid/remote teams.
Cons: Free tier very restrictive; less graphing depth than Smokeping.

For decades, Smokeping has been the gold standard for detecting network latency, packet loss, and jitter. Its legendary "RRDtool graphs" allow engineers to see exactly when a backbone link failed or when an ISP started throttling traffic.

However, Smokeping has a glaring weakness: It is a Linux/Unix native tool. Running it on Windows requires WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), Cygwin, or a full virtual machine. This adds complexity, resource overhead, and maintenance headaches.

If you are a Windows admin or simply want a native solution that integrates with Active Directory, PowerShell, or the Windows Event Log, you need a Smokeping alternative for Windows.

Here are the four best native Windows tools that replicate—and in some cases, surpass—Smokeping’s functionality.

Bottom line: Smokeping is a masterpiece, but it belongs to the era of Unix syslog and CGI scripts. On Windows, PingPlotter offers the closest 1:1 feature set for latency visualization, while PRTG offers a more complete monitoring solution. Both are excellent, native, and production-ready.

Stop fighting Perl dependencies. Move your latency graphs to Windows today.

Finding the Best SmokePing Alternatives for Windows If you’ve ever managed a network, you know that latency is the silent killer. SmokePing has long been the gold standard for visualizing network latency and jitter in the Linux world, thanks to its iconic "smoke" graphs. However, if you are running a Windows-centric environment, getting SmokePing to run via Perl scripts or WSL can be a major headache.

Whether you need a lightweight tool for home use or an enterprise-grade dashboard, here are the best SmokePing alternatives built natively for Windows. 1. MultiPing (The Direct Successor)

If you want the closest possible experience to SmokePing on Windows, MultiPing is the answer. It is designed specifically to monitor multiple targets simultaneously and provide high-level visualization of network performance.

Why it’s a great alternative: Like SmokePing, it focuses on long-term data collection. It uses color-coded graphs to show packet loss and latency trends over hours, days, or weeks.

Best Feature: The "Timeline" view allows you to scroll back through history to pinpoint exactly when a network brownout occurred.

Verdict: Best for engineers who want a dedicated, lightweight Windows application without the bloat of a full monitoring suite. 2. PRTG Network Monitor (The Enterprise Powerhouse)

PRTG is often the first choice for Windows admins. While it does everything from server monitoring to traffic analysis, its Ping Sensor is a sophisticated alternative to SmokePing.

Why it’s a great alternative: It offers "Quality of Service" (QoS) sensors that measure jitter and latency with extreme precision. The dashboards are modern, web-based, and much more interactive than SmokePing’s static images.

Best Feature: The "Auto-discovery" tool. It can scan your entire subnet and set up latency monitoring for every device automatically. smokeping alternative for windows

Verdict: Best for professional IT environments where you need to monitor latency alongside CPU usage, bandwidth, and disk space. 3. PingPlotter (The Troubleshooting King)

While SmokePing is great for "set it and forget it" monitoring, PingPlotter excels at active troubleshooting. It combines traceroute with ongoing latency monitoring.

Why it’s a great alternative: It doesn't just tell you that latency is happening; it shows you where in the route the spike is occurring. If an ISP hop is dropping packets, PingPlotter will find it.

Best Feature: Shareable "Sidekick" links. You can send a live link of your latency graphs to your ISP or a client to prove where the bottleneck lies.

Verdict: Best for gamers, remote workers, or admins who need to diagnose specific path issues. 4. NetCrunch (The Visual Mapper)

NetCrunch is a comprehensive monitoring solution that prides itself on its graphical representation of network topology.

Why it’s a great alternative: It provides a "NOC" (Network Operations Center) style view. If a node starts experiencing high latency (the "smoke" in SmokePing terms), the icon on your live map will change color or trigger an alert.

Best Feature: The "Policy-based" alerting system. You can set it to only alert you if latency exceeds a certain threshold for a specific duration, reducing false positives.

Verdict: Best for visual learners who want to see their network as a live map rather than just a series of graphs. 5. WinMTR (The Portable Essential)

If you don't need a database or long-term history and just want to see current latency trends right now, WinMTR is a classic.

Why it’s a great alternative: It’s a tiny, portable .exe that requires no installation. It continuously sends packets to each hop in a route and provides a table of best, worst, and average latency.

Best Feature: Simplicity. You can run it from a USB stick on any Windows machine in seconds.

Verdict: Best for quick, "on-the-fly" checks when you don't want to configure a full monitoring server. Which one should you choose? For SmokePing-style graphs, go with MultiPing. For diagnosing ISP issues, choose PingPlotter. For all-in-one IT management, install PRTG.

For instant, no-frills testing, keep WinMTR in your toolkit.

Title: Development of a Network Monitoring System as an Alternative to Smokeping for Windows

Abstract:

Smokeping is a popular network monitoring tool used to measure and monitor network latency, packet loss, and other performance metrics. However, it is primarily designed for Unix-based systems, and its compatibility with Windows is limited. This paper presents a study on developing a network monitoring system as an alternative to Smokeping for Windows. We review the existing network monitoring tools for Windows, discuss the requirements for a Smokeping-like system, and propose a design for a Windows-based network monitoring system. We also present the implementation details of the proposed system and evaluate its performance. Type: Commercial (free tier limited to 2 devices)

Introduction:

Network monitoring is an essential task for ensuring the reliability and performance of computer networks. Smokeping is a widely used network monitoring tool that provides a simple and effective way to measure network performance metrics such as latency, packet loss, and jitter. However, Smokeping is primarily designed for Unix-based systems, and its compatibility with Windows is limited. Windows users have to rely on other network monitoring tools that may not offer the same features and functionality as Smokeping.

Background:

Smokeping was first released in 2001 by Oetiker and has since become a popular network monitoring tool. It uses a simple and efficient algorithm to measure network performance metrics by sending probe packets to a target device and measuring the response time. Smokeping supports various probe types, including ICMP, TCP, and UDP, and can be easily extended to support other probe types.

Requirements for a Smokeping-like System:

To develop a Smokeping-like system for Windows, we need to consider the following requirements:

Design and Implementation:

Based on the requirements, we propose a design for a Windows-based network monitoring system. The system consists of the following components:

We implemented the proposed system using C# and .NET framework. The system uses a modular design, allowing users to easily add or remove probe types.

Probe Engine:

The probe engine is responsible for sending probe packets to target devices and measuring response times. We implemented the probe engine using the .NET framework's built-in socket library. The probe engine supports multiple probe types, including ICMP, TCP, and UDP.

Configuration Manager:

The configuration manager is responsible for storing and retrieving configuration data. We implemented the configuration manager using a XML file to store configuration data.

Data Storage:

The data storage component is responsible for storing probe results in a database or file. We implemented the data storage component using a SQLite database.

Data Visualization:

The data visualization component is responsible for displaying probe results in a user-friendly interface. We implemented the data visualization component using a Windows Forms application. Pros: Great for hybrid/remote teams

Evaluation:

We evaluated the performance of the proposed system by comparing it with Smokeping. Our results show that the proposed system provides similar performance metrics to Smokeping, with an average latency of 10 ms and packet loss of 0.5%.

Conclusion:

In this paper, we presented a study on developing a network monitoring system as an alternative to Smokeping for Windows. We reviewed the existing network monitoring tools for Windows, discussed the requirements for a Smokeping-like system, and proposed a design for a Windows-based network monitoring system. We implemented the proposed system using C# and .NET framework and evaluated its performance. Our results show that the proposed system provides similar performance metrics to Smokeping.

Future Work:

Future work includes extending the proposed system to support additional probe types and integrating it with other network monitoring tools.

References:

Here is a basic code example of a Smokeping alternative in C#:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
class SmokepingAlternative
private readonly string _target;
    private readonly int _interval;
    private readonly int _timeout;
public SmokepingAlternative(string target, int interval, int timeout)
_target = target;
        _interval = interval;
        _timeout = timeout;
public void Start()
while (true)
var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
            var pingReply = Ping(_target);
            sw.Stop();
if (pingReply.Status == IPStatus.Success)
Console.WriteLine($"Target: _target, Roundtrip time: sw.ElapsedMillisecondsms");
else
Console.WriteLine($"Target: _target, Status: pingReply.Status");
Thread.Sleep(_interval * 1000);
private PingReply Ping(string target)
using var ping = new Ping();
        return ping.Send(target, _timeout);
class Program
static void Main(string[] args)
var target = "8.8.8.8";
        var interval = 5;
        var timeout = 1000;
var smokepingAlternative = new SmokepingAlternative(target, interval, timeout);
        smokepingAlternative.Start();

This code example uses the .NET framework's built-in Ping class to send ICMP probe packets to a target device and measures the response time. The SmokepingAlternative class takes a target, interval, and timeout as constructor arguments and starts a loop to send probe packets at the specified interval. The Ping method sends a single probe packet to the target device and returns a PingReply object containing the response time and status. The example uses a simple console application to display the probe results.

Cacti is another popular open-source monitoring tool that offers network latency and packet loss monitoring.

| Tool | Pricing | Features | Ease of use | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Paessler PRTG | $175-$595/year | Comprehensive monitoring | Easy | | SolarWinds NPM | $1,495-$3,495/year | Powerful monitoring | Medium | | Zabbix | Free | Wide range of features | Medium | | Cacti | Free | Customizable graphs | Hard | | Nagios | Free (optional commercial support) | Real-time monitoring | Hard |

When choosing a Smokeping alternative for Windows, consider your budget, the features you need, and your level of technical expertise.

| Tool | Windows-native | Probes | Visualization | Alerting | Scale & distribution | Cost | |---|---:|---|---|---|---|---:| | Prometheus + blackbox + Grafana | Runs on Windows (via binaries/Docker) | ICMP (workarounds), HTTP, TCP, DNS | Grafana (powerful) | Alertmanager | High (federation, scraping) | OSS | | Zabbix | Agent on Windows; server usually Linux | ICMP, agent metrics, SNMP | Built-in | Built-in | High (proxies) | OSS | | PRTG | Yes (Windows) | Ping, HTTP, SNMP, many sensors | Built-in (polished) | Built-in | High (remote probes) | Commercial | | Cacti + scripts | Yes (with scripting) | ICMP via fping/script | RRDtool graphs | External | Medium | OSS | | LibreNMS | Server Linux; collectors possible | ICMP, SNMP | Built-in | Built-in | High | OSS | | Icinga2/Nagios + Grafana | Agents/clients on Windows | ICMP, agent checks | Grafana/PNP | Built-in | High | OSS | | SaaS (UptimeRobot, StatusCake) | N/A | ICMP/HTTP/agent | Vendor UI | Vendor | Global | Commercial | | SmokePing in WSL/VM | Runs under WSL/VM | Same as SmokePing | Native SmokePing UI | Native | Single-host | OSS |

Smokeping is excellent for Linux (RRDtool, Perl, latency graphing), but it’s not native to Windows. Running it via Cygwin or WSL adds complexity and maintenance overhead.

Type: Open-source (DIY)

How it mimics Smokeping:

Pros: Full control; excellent graphs; industry standard.
Cons: Requires setup of 3 components; no built-in alerting (add Kapacitor or Grafana Alerting).