QuickServerCheck On-Line Manual
On-Line Manual
This web page provides the on-line manual for QuickServerCheck. It can be accessed from the "Help" menu item in the app.
Start Up
Open QuickServerCheck and you will see a map with a blue circle centred on your current location. As you add hosts, the map will automatically zoom out to show the additional hosts.
Access to Your Location
On first use, you may be prompted to allow this app to determine your location, and this is required for correct operation. If your location cannot be determined, QuickServerCheck will not be able to show your location in relation to other hosts on the map, or to show lines when these hosts are pinged. It will however still be able to ping the selected hosts and provide graphs and detail reports.
Network Connectivity
This app cannot function without a connection to the network (WiFi, wired etc). It requires this to determine your current location, load map data, lookup host data, access this on-line manual and most importantly to ping remote hosts. If you are not connected you will be prompted to connect.
Registering Monitored Hosts
To quickly get started, the "Check" menu item provides some sample hosts to ping.
You can enter a host into the text field in the title bar. Press the [+] button to register the host. The host can be entered as a IP4, IP6, domain name or web address.
If the host IP cannot be determined you will see a popup message.
If the host IP is valid, the host is registered and remembered by QuickServerCheck and will still be there if you restart the app. An extra ping graph will appear in the list. Within a few seconds, the GPS coordinate and other details of the host are looked up and displayed when the host graph is selected. This information is cached in the app to minimise the number of lookup requests.
Buttons on each host graph allow the host to be enabled or disabled for pinging. You can also unregister a host with the [-] button.
The Map
Registered hosts are shown on the map provided that their GPS coordinates can be determined.
When pinging is enabled for any host, blue lines are drawn on the map from your current location to that host. The lines are shown in a lighter colour when the host is actually being pinged. For hosts on the other side of the planet, the line may be curved because of the geodesic distortion of the underlying map. If a host ping times out, the line will change to red and a timeout message will appear for that host graph.
The map will automatically pan and zoom to show all hosts on the map where possible. It will automatically return to showing all possible hosts when resized or the map is dragged and released.
Single tapping a pin will cause the corresponding host to be selected in the list and the map pin expand. The map auto-zooms to show your current location and the host location unless the map is at the zoom limit. Try resizing the app window to provide a better view.
Tapping on the map background de-selects the currently selected host on the map and in the list.
When you tap on a host within your country, the map also displays a route via roads and waterways. A label is shown that indicates the distance and travel time.
In v1.1:
- You can move the map to your current location by hitting the small arrow on the top right of the map.
- The map also allows rotation and shows a compass control when appropriate. Tap this control to re-align the map North.
- When the map is zoomed, a map scale is displayed. Zoom can be achieved with pinch gestures or by clicking the +/- buttons on the map. Drag the map to pan around.
- A tilt control is included that can provide a 3D view of various map features where available.
Host Pinging
Many hosts can be registered and pinging does not start automatically. You must enable selected or all hosts for pinging before pinging starts.
QuickServerCheck only ever pings one host at a time on a round-robin basis for the hosts that have pinging enabled. Pinging any one host is limited to one ping each 2 seconds. These limitations are due to the underlying networking infrastructure.
Note that some hosts do not respond to pings and will show a red line on the map after a few seconds. This is often intentional and is dependent on how the administrator of that host has configured their network services and their firewall. There is no work-around unless the administrator of that host provides you with access to ping it.
Menu Items
The "File" menu provides actions to save and load your current list of hosts. If the file being loaded cannot be interpretted you will see a popup warning and no data will be loaded. All hosts loaded from file will add to the currently loaded hosts.
The "Check" menu provides actions to clear and register a number of sample hosts so that you can see the app in operation somewhere near your location. Note that some of these host may change or block pings over time. They are provided only for initial testing.
If you would like to create a list of hosts from a different source, the simplest way is to save a couple of hosts to a file then replicate this JSON format with your own data. The "Load Host List" can then be used to load the list of hosts. These will then be remembered on each restart of the app. Alternatively, add each host using the app and check that it returns pings. When all your hosts are registered, use the file menu to save your list as a backup. The app however will normally remember your selected hosts between restarts.
Screen Layout
The QuickServerCheck window is resizeable. There are also splitter bars between panels that allow resizing. Whenever the size of the map changes, it re-zooms to show all possible hosts.
Limitations
It should be noted that some hosts do not respond to pings either because of configuration on that host or firewalls between you and that host. In these cases a red status message will be shown on the host graph.
The GPS coordinates of some hosts may not be publicly available and in these cases the host will not be shown on the map, but will be listed in the host graph listing.
The Apple Map used to display hosts has a limitation of +/- 90 degrees span of the planet, so there may be situations where not all hosts can be shown as pins on the map simulateously. You can see them by dragging on the map.
Technical Notes
Some notes about the QuickServerCheck Technicalities for those interested in the gory details.
Credits
Many thanks to Erin Collett for her brilliant work on the icon for this and other Acacia apps and overall design advice.
Acacia wish to acknowledge the following developers and sites for their hard work.
- https://github.com/spacenation/swiftui-charts for the charts
- https://github.com/samiyr/SwiftyPing for a stable ICMP package
- https://ipinfo.io for GPS information
- https://tools.tracemyip.org for information on hosts in various countries
- https://apple.com for their amazing development tools and maps