A connection monitor utility may monitor the availability of various resources, display a status, and provide various optimization functions for each resource. Performance data may be collected and displayed, and the performance data may be used to optimize, troubleshoot, and notify administrators or users for each connection. Some embodiments may store optimized parameters for connections from different locations. In one use model, the monitor utility may be used with a secure connection to a private network to provide visual feedback of connectivity to various resources and simple optimization of the connections.