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Logon accounts and Windows authentication

If the service logon account assigned to the Network Monitor service is a local user account, all monitors and actions require an account to perform Windows authentication.

When creating an account that is to be used for Windows monitors, it's important to have an understanding of how Windows authentication works. To help Network Monitor select the correct Windows account when authenticating you need to specify where the account is stored. This is done by adding the machine name or domain name before the username, separated with a backslash.

Example 1

  • Username: Robert
  • Password: Robert

Example 2

  • Username: mydomain\Robert
  • Password: Robert

In example 1, Network Monitor would look for the account on the local machine and then in the domain (if there is a domain in the network). Example 2 tells Network Monitor to look for the account information in the domain only. The pitfall in example 1 is that there might be a local user name Robert that has different privileges then the domain user called Robert, leading to access denied errors and other problems while testing.

Accounts and UNIX objects

All UNIX specific monitors—such as Memory utilization, CPU utilization etc—require an assigned logon account. Most of the time, all monitors of a single object use the same credential, so it's usually sufficient to assign a logon account to the object only. (It is possible to assign a logon account to a specific monitor.)

Other usages of logon accounts

Some actions also require a logon account. For example, the Windows service control action requires a logon account to obtain the correct credentials.