If you’re like me then you enjoy time away from the desk. For IT professionals, however, it is not unusual to be interrupted during your personal time with a question or problem from a panicking co-worker or user. It used to be the case that you’d have to drop what you were doing and run to a computer to look into an issue but now that smart phones (iPhones specifically) are so widely available it is easy to troubleshoot a problem remotely from your hand held device. That is, if you have the right apps installed!

Here are the 5 apps that I rely on daily as an IT pro.

Network Utility – IP Troubleshooting Utility

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Stuck in an area away from your computer? But still need to check your website or server status? With Network Utility you can check your website or server status from anywhere that you have internet or cell phone reception.

Features:

* Ping (ICMP Echo)
* TCP/IP Port Scan
* GeoIP lookup
* Geotargeting with Google Maps
* Whois Query
* IP Address Information

Screenshots:

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iSource – Source Viewer and DNS Swiss Army Knife

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iSource Browser is a source-aware web browser for the iPhone. It is a fully functional web browser with the following additional features.

* HTML source
* WHOIS lookup
* DIG lookup
* HOST lookup
* Emailing of debug info
* Transparent debug console

Screenshots:

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Domain Scout – Domain Availability

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Domain scout is a handy utility to perform domain name availability queries quickly from your iPhone.

Features:

* Supports all domains, including global country-codes.
* Customizable top-level domain buttons, to save typing.
* Smart-parsing of top WHOIS formats for convenient viewing.
* Searches are always private & safe from domain front-running.

Screenshots:

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IRC 999 – IRC Client

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IRC is an excellent way to get another set of eyes on the problem you’re experiencing. IRC999 provides a fully functional IRC client in your pocket for free. It was a little bit unintuitive to get set up initially, but once up and running it works great!

Screenshots:

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iRdesktop – Remote Desktop Client

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iRdesktop is a free Remote Desktop Client for Windows Terminal Services (Remote Desktop Services), capable of natively using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to view and control your Windows Desktop using your iPhone and iPod Touch.

Screenshots:

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Now you are probably wondering where the SSH client is. Unfortunately I haven’t come across a free SSH client for the iPhone. However there are a number of paid clients that you can read more about here.

I hope you find these apps as useful as I do!