Feature: network tools panel (ping, traceroute, DNS lookup, port scan) for network engineers

[KrisPowers]

Summary

Network engineers need access to common diagnostic tools constantly. While these are available via the terminal, there is no structured UI that makes them faster to use or lets you compare results across multiple runs.

Proposed scope

A sidebar panel with common network diagnostic tools:

• Ping: target host, packet count, interval, RTT graph over time
• Traceroute: visual hop-by-hop display with latency per hop
• DNS lookup: query type selector (A, AAAA, MX, TXT, CNAME, NS), resolver selector
• Port check: test whether a TCP port on a remote host is open (useful for firewall validation)
• Whois / IP info: lookup for an IP or domain name showing ASN, org, and geolocation

Results are displayed in a clean, formatted output and can be saved or copied.

Implementation approach

For a Windows-first MVP:

• Ping: IcmpSendEcho2 (Windows ICMP API) or invoke ping.exe via shell.exec and parse output
• Traceroute: invoke tracert.exe and parse output
• DNS: DnsQuery_W (Windows DNS API) for in-process queries
• Port check: Winsock connect() with a short timeout

For cross-platform: fall back to CLI invocations parsed in C++.

Who benefits

• Network engineers diagnosing connectivity issues
• DevOps engineers troubleshooting service reachability
• Software engineers debugging cross-service connectivity in distributed systems

Files

• cpp/apps/nettools/dllmain.cpp (native network operations backend)
• app/frontend/src/apps/nettools/ (React panel)
• Register in app/frontend/src/apps/sidebarRegistry.ts