You should know the state of your network every second of the day no matter if you’re a system admin or network administrator, so monitor potential problems before they become production issues is very crucial. In the past years, Networking Monitoring Software are in a state of rapid growth.
And there has been a demand for open-source network monitoring with network scanning and SNMP integration combined, which is the best offer for administrators. At present, many Networking Monitoring Tools provide a real-time breakdown for your live network.
Network Monitoring Software tracks the complete performance of a computer network. They further measure response time, consistency, reliability, availability, and the overall traffic of a network. All of it based on real-time and historical performance data.
In today’s interconnected world, a smooth-running network is crucial for businesses and individuals alike. Whether you’re managing a sprawling corporate infrastructure or just want to ensure your home network is at its peak, Network Monitoring Software can be your best ally.
Let’s dive deep into what this software is, its benefits, and its safety, and discover if free solutions exist.
What is Network Monitoring Software?
Network Monitoring Software is a set of tools that continuously observe a network’s performance, detect irregularities, failures, or unauthorized activities. By analyzing the flow of data, these tools ensure everything is running optimally and alert administrators to any potential issues.
10 Best Network Monitoring Software and Tools
So here’s a List of Top Network Monitoring Software and Tools as of 2023.
1. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
Solarwinds network monitor automatically discovers network devices and deploys it within an hour with the help of this tool. You can customize the web-based performance dashboards, charts, and views.
Also, Salarwinds, with dynamic network topology maps and automatic detection of components, it becomes easy for administrators to scale the network and align important processes as it grows.
Solarwinds is capable of controlling the response time, availability and uptime of routers, switches, and other SNMP enabled devices. The monitoring process looks for the performance and availability indicators of network devices and interfaces, such as delays, bandwidth load, responses, packet loss, CPU, and memory for every piece of equipment with SNMP and WMI support.
Network Performance Monitor allows you to quickly configure alerts for events, conditions, and conditions of network devices and also allows you to block notifications based on dependencies and topology results of which you receive alerts on important network issues only.
The user interface is straightforward to understand and yet robust enough to provide a comprehensive view of the network. It is easy to see everything at a glance, and the statistical network baselines provide additional information to optimize network devices and respond to the issues quickly.
It has numerous features like Multi-vendor network monitoring, NetPath and PerfStack for easy troubleshooting, and so on.
2. PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG provides a network monitoring solution that can easily monitor your complete infrastructure, including LAN, WAN, Application Monitoring, Cloud Services, etc. It further provides a map designer to create a dashboard and integrates the network components as per your requirement.
PRTG software is known for its advanced infrastructure management capabilities. The tool monitors IT infrastructure using technologies like WMI, REST, SNMP, sniffing, SQL, APIS, and others.
It provides fully featured web interfaces for desktop, easy and flexible alerting, Multiple user interfaces, alerts when recognizes a warning, or any unusual metrics in your network, in-depth reporting. Reports can be scheduled and run on demand.
This tool will also allow you to export the reports in HTML, PDF, CSV, or XML files. It also has features of distributed monitoring, cluster failover solution, and reporting, and for alerting, it has 10built in technologies like email, plays alarm studio files, and pushes. And on the top of all PRTG network monitor has a Mobile App as well.
3. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager is an integrated network management solution that facilitates efficient and hassle-free network management. It is a powerful, user-friendly network monitoring software that allows you to monitor routers, firewalls, servers, switches, and VMs with the help of its tool.
Along with this, it empowers network, or IT administers to simultaneously perform multiple operations such as Bandwidth analysis, Network performance monitoring, Configuration management, Firewall management, Storage Monitoring, IP Address Management (IPAM) and Switch Port management (SPM).
It has a highly customizable dashboard on OpManager, which allows you the view of its entire network infrastructure. The intuitive GUI provides an out-of-the-box overview that enables the user to monitor important metrics without the need to navigate through multiple menu options, Therefore providing in-depth visibility and complete control to get rid of all network-related issues easily.
Additional features like Monitoring quality of VoIP calls across WAN infrastructure, resolve problems regarding VoIP performance, Network health monitoring, to visualize every network outage ManageEngine OpManager offers automatic network mapping with continuous monitors WAN link availability
4. WhatsUp Gold 2017
WhatsUp Gold is a powerful and easy-to-use software tool for comprehensive monitoring of network systems and applications. It allows you to troubleshoot problems before they affect the user experience.
It also gives you an accurate idea of the status and performance of applications, servers, and network devices. The dashboard is user-friendly and visually attractive, which can be customized to display IT infrastructure, and alerts can be set to fit your needs.
This provides you a detailed interactive map of complete network infrastructure and will allow you to monitor and map everything like wireless controllers, virtual machines, traffic flows, servers, etc.
Additional features like continuous monitoring of your network’s health with customizable alerts, reporting, dashboards, discovery, Network mapping, and cloud monitoring.
WhatsUp Gold gives you visibility on the Hyper-V & VMware environments, network performance, AWS & Azure cloud environments, bandwidth consumption, and the performance of wireless networks.
5. Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source monitoring tool that provides monitoring services for network, server, cloud, application, and service. Also, it focuses on monitoring and trending functionality. It has features of advanced problem detection, intelligent alerting, and remediation.
It offers its solutions for industries like aerospace, retail, government, etc. The software is widely used to monitor servers and network hardware, and it can also forecast future behavior based on historical data.
Its features include problem detection, notifications, APIs, use of metric collection methods, and protocols like IPMI, SNMP, etc. and distributed monitoring. Further, it provides flexible and extendable data gathering.
It can auto-detect network devices and can change device configuration and provides various options for notification and easy measurement of network performance and health.
6. Nagios XI
Nagios is a best Network Monitoring Software. It does anything that system and network administrators might need from a network monitoring utility. It allows organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before it affects the critical business process.
The web interface provided by Nagios XI is fast and intuitive, and the server is extremely reliable. Nagios’s r complex configuration can be a problem for beginners to learn, but it is also an advantage, as the tool can be adapted to almost any monitoring task.
Nagios allows you to continuously monitor the status of servers, services, network channels, and everything else that has IP addresses. For example, you can monitor the use of disk space on the server, RAM and CPU usage, NetFlow traffic, server air temperature, WAN and internet connection latencies, and much more.
Further, it allows you to keep track of specific subsets of network flow information, provides complete insights on bandwidth, network traffic, and overall network health, receives alerts as soon as any unusual activity takes place, provides advanced user options and a comprehensive dashboard.
7. Datadog
Datadog is a monitoring tool, it is built for hybrid cloud environments and monitoring. Datadog helps you to analyze the performance of networks, apps, and services. It has features for collaboration, Machine learning, API, alerts, logs, APM, synthetics, and it allows you to create custom graphs, meters, and alerts.
Moreover, it is best for any business small large or medium or a freelancer. Also, it is an infrastructure monitoring platform with features of real-time customizable dashboards, alerts, and integrations.
Datadog provides machine learning-based flash alerts on critical issues, advanced administrative tools, forecast monitoring, full visibility into your applications, unlimited user accounts, and enterprise-grade security, and with the Pro version, it provides centralized monitoring of systems and services.
8. Incinga
Incinga is an open-source infrastructure and service monitoring tool. Icinga is popular at providing superior alters and reports the health of your IT environment. All alert dependencies are displayed in the dashboard and sent via email, SMS, or mobile messaging apps.
Incinga is entirely free of cost since it is open-source. It provides all the support with its strong community forum. Its features include monitoring, services, provide configuration and templates, allows clustering and zone monitoring, and support both direct and SNMP monitoring.
9. ConnectWise Automate
ConnectWise Automate is a new cloud-based manager and a monitoring solution that solves IT Problems from a single location. The tool helps you to eliminate blind spots in your supported environments before they become a problem.
ConnectWise automatically discovers all devices around your network, which can be monitored proactively. The tool interprets problems and initiates an automatic pre-defined action to mitigate the issues, which results in improved network visibility.
The tool also provides a feature “Patch management.” It allows you to protect all your systems with simultaneous patching from a centralized manager.
Some features also include the removal of delivery roadblocks and so on. The Pro feature resolves issues quickly by allowing remote support, remote access, and even remote meetings.
10. Logic Monitor
LogicMonitor is an automatic SaaS network monitoring tool. It can automatically discover all network devices and interfaces. The tool provides a monitoring solution with the development option of on-premises, hybrid infrastructure, and cloud.
It also monitors the temperature, Fan, memory, CPU, and other hardware. The tool provides a cloud-based platform for network monitoring. Furthermore, the tool offers to customize the dashboard, alert routing, system log, reports, and event monitoring with functionalities for performance monitoring and tracking.
It also provides wireless access-point monitoring and interface metrics. Also, it can provide throughput, packet and error rates, utilization, etc. The tool can identify issues by providing predictive alters and trend analysis. Logic Monitor offers a free trial and is best for small, medium, and large businesses.
How Do You Monitor a Network System?
Monitoring a network system involves several steps:
- Data Collection: The software constantly gathers data from various network devices using protocols like SNMP, WMI, or NetFlow.
- Analysis: The collected data is analyzed to identify patterns, anomalies, or potential threats.
- Visualization: Modern monitoring tools provide dashboards and visualizations to make sense of the vast amounts of data.
- Alerts and Notification: Should any metric exceed a set threshold, the software will notify the administrators.
- Action & Resolution: Depending on the software, some issues might be auto-resolved or will need manual intervention.
Benefits of Network Monitoring Software
- Proactive Problem Resolution: By continuously monitoring network health, potential issues can be identified and resolved before they escalate.
- Enhanced Security: Detect unauthorized access or unusual activities, ensuring a more secure network.
- Performance Optimization: Understand network bottlenecks and allocate resources efficiently.
- Cost Savings: Reducing downtime, enhancing productivity, and avoiding large-scale network disasters can result in significant savings.
- Comprehensive Reports: These tools can generate detailed reports, useful for understanding network performance over time and for compliance purposes.
Is Network Monitoring Software Safe?
While Network Monitoring Software aims to enhance the safety of a network, it’s essential to ensure that the software itself is secure. Trusted and reputable software providers prioritize user security, but some guidelines should be followed:
- Always download software from reputable sources.
- Regularly update the software to patch any security vulnerabilities.
- Limit access to the software to authorized personnel only.
- Implement multi-factor authentication, if supported.
- Check reviews and security reports before selecting a software.
Is Network Monitoring Software Free?
While many network monitoring tools come with a price tag, several reputable free solutions are available. Tools like Nagios, PRTG Network Monitor (free for up to 100 sensors), and Zabbix offer robust monitoring capabilities without any cost.
However, these might have limitations in features or scalability compared to their paid counterparts.
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Conclusion
Lastly, we have reviewed the top Network Monitoring Tools in this article. These monitoring tools and software are for your complete infrastructure, and they have capabilities for distributed monitoring.
There are plenty of Network Monitoring Software available in the market, and choosing one is difficult. So you can choose anyone out of these network monitoring tools. It is used for monitoring devices, services, ports, protocols, and analyzing traffic on your network.
Network Monitoring Software is an indispensable tool in the arsenal of IT professionals and network administrators. By providing insights into network health, enhancing security, and ensuring optimal performance, these tools play a critical role in today’s digital landscape.
Whether opting for a free solution or investing in a premium tool, the value they bring in terms of security and optimization is undeniable. Remember always to prioritize safety and choose a software solution that aligns with your specific network needs.
