Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
Another Internet utility. I found a link to Naviscope (www.naviscope.com) this week. Naviscope is a swiss army knife Internet tool, providing ad blocking, DNS caching, prefetch, logging and a few other features. As such, it can replace Proxomitron, FastNet, and Netsonic–three utilities I mention in Optimizing Windows.
I find I like it, but I really miss Proxomitron’s ability to freeze animated GIFs. I absolutely, positively detest anything that moves on Web pages, so I love that feature and find I hate living without it. You can run Naviscope through another proxy server, so I may just try running the two in conjunction with each other. Maybe one will catch ads the other won’t.
I do like the prefetch, which is much more polite than NetSonic (though you have to configure it, but it prefetches only a few links, rather than prefetching everything that links like NetSonic), and the DNS cache is great. Of course I can do that with a Linux box with BIND set up (a great use for a 386 or low-end 486, by the way), but this is easier for most people.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.