Run start-nettool.bat or start-nettool.sh, or from
the command line:
java -jar nettool.jar
NetTool is two utilities. The first of these is a tunnel tool, which listens on a port, and tunnels any incoming traffic to a specified port on another (or indeed the same) machine. This is useful if you wish to look at the traffic for debugging purposes, for instance if you're sending SOAP requests, etc. The second utility is an "HTTP Sender". You can type in text, or load a file (or just drag n' drop) into the left text area. You specify a URL to send to, and you can add arbitrary HTTP headers. The Content-Length header is automatically calculated for you. Pressing the Send button sends the request to the specified URL, and the response is displayed in the right text area. Note that you can create (and destroy) instances of the Sender and Tunnel from the File menu.
If you have any questions, bug reports, or feature requests, please visit the NetTool Project on SourceForge, or email the author directly at neil.otoole@nettool.org. The project page has bug-report and feature-request tracking mechanisms - it is best to make use of these.
There is also an article on NetTool available at CapeScience.
NetTool was created by Neil O'Toole, originally as a personal utility for playing with the HTTP protocol. NetTool was published as an open-source project in June 2002, and is hosted at the excellent SourceForge.net. If you want to get involved with the NetTool project, please email me.
I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. NetTool is made available under the Lesser GNU Public License, or LGPL. This license basically allows you to distribute NetTool as-is, but if you choose to distribute a modified version, you must also make your modifications available. Also, there is absolutely no warranty of any kind. Anyway, read the license for the definitive word. Note that you must always include this readme with your distribution. The copyright for NetTool belongs to the members of the NetTool open-source project.
During the lifetime of the NetTool project, Neil O'Toole studied or worked at several organisations, including Trinity College Dublin, CR2 Ltd., Goldman Sachs, Inc., and Cape Clear Software, Inc.. NetTool is an independent project of Neil O'Toole, and it has no legal connection with any of these organisations - they are in no way liable should NetTool cause damages of any sort to you. Additionally, Cape Clear has explicitly asked that it be made known that it disclaims all copyright interest in NetTool.