Download Bean Network Tester

The facts, in one place

• Price: free, and free software - GNU GPL v3.
• Runs on: Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit. Linux, as an experiment: 64-bit (x86_64), checked on Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04.
• Needs: administrator rights, because traffic is captured by a driver. On Linux, root rights and kernel 5.10 or newer.
• Install: not needed. Unpack the zip anywhere and run it. Or use the .msi installer, which adds a Start Menu entry and puts the program on PATH (it needs administrator rights). On Linux, unpack the .tar.gz.
• Sends data: nothing on its own. No telemetry, no update check. Its Ping tool sends only to the address you type.
• Modes: a window, and the same file as a command-line tool.
• Source: on GitHub, under the same licence.

What is in the release

A release publishes eight files. Three are the program, and the other five are there so you do not have to take the download on trust:

• the zip - the program and the driver it uses, together in one folder;
• the .msi installer - the same program, installed for everyone on the computer, with a Start Menu entry;
• the .tar.gz - the program for Linux, with its own Python, as an experiment;
• SHA256SUMS.txt - the checksums of the zip, the installer and the Linux package;
• two SBOMs - a standard list of every component inside, with versions and licences, one signed against the zip and one against the Linux package;
• two .sigstore.json files - those signatures as files, to check them without asking GitHub.

Checking that you got what we built

The checksum answers "did this arrive unchanged". In PowerShell, compare the output with the line in SHA256SUMS.txt (for the installer, put .msi in place of .zip):

Get-FileHash .\BeanNetworkTester-*.zip -Algorithm SHA256

The signature answers a different question - "did this come out of that repository" - and needs the GitHub command-line tool:

gh attestation verify BeanNetworkTester-vX.Y.Z-windows-x64.zip --repo donislawdev/BeanNetworkTester --predicate-type https://spdx.dev/Document/v2.3

On Linux, run both checks in the folder that holds the package and SHA256SUMS.txt:

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS.txt
gh attestation verify BeanNetworkTester-vX.Y.Z-linux-x64.tar.gz --repo donislawdev/BeanNetworkTester --predicate-type https://spdx.dev/Document/v2.3

Type the name of the file you downloaded as the first part - gh does not accept a * there. Keep --predicate-type: without it gh looks for a different kind of statement and reports that it found none.

A checksum you copy from the same page as the download proves less than a signature. Both are published, so both are worth a moment.

Windows may warn you

The program and the installer are signed, so Windows names who signed them instead of saying "Unknown publisher". The certificate is new, so SmartScreen may still warn for a while - it has not seen it often yet. That is about the certificate, not about the file, and the two checks above let you verify the file yourself. The questions page covers this and what the driver needs.

On Linux

The package is the same program with its own Python and Tk, so nothing needs installing first. Unpack it, add it to the applications menu, and start it:

tar -xzf BeanNetworkTester-vX.Y.Z-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd BeanNetworkTester
./BeanNetworkTester --install-desktop
./BeanNetworkTester

Started without sudo, the window asks for an administrator's password in the desktop's own dialog. The package needs glibc 2.38 or newer, so Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 12 are too old for it. Linux support is an experiment, and the README says where it differs from Windows.