Of all the “monitorings” one can do (server, application, storage, cloud, etc.), network monitoring is often the first foray an IT professional makes once they get past simply pinging a device to see if it’s up. This is when many of us begin to consider how CPU and RAM affect bandwidth processing; when we start to truly wonder how many big buffer misses there have been in the last two hours; and whether, had we known about that flapping route a little sooner, we could have avoided the Sev1 call with the CIO.
At the same time, networks continue to grow, both in size and complexity, so that those simple (and admittedly simplistic) metrics of yesteryear have given way to a need to monitor complex and varied elements such as virtual port channel status, ACL rule mismatches, and switch-stack failover cabling.
The good news is that network monitoring tools have been keeping pace with network growth, resulting in a wide range of options that can do everything from simply monitoring up/down time to receiving real-time information about devices on your network.
While I’m not going to list out every open-source, free, freemium, or paid software out there, this network monitoring tools guide covers many common network monitoring pain points for which I’ll provide my choice of best tool to solve the issue. My hope is that this will help you during your own research process, whether you are looking for your first tool or want to replace or upgrade your current solution because it no longer meets your network monitoring needs.
Best Overall Network Monitoring Software: Network Performance Monitor
Nmap is quite a popular free open source network mapping software for Windows. It is used for various tasks like network discovery, security auditing, network inventory, monitoring hosts, etc. It is basically a command line utility, but it provides a GUI too called Zenmap.Using it, you can scan devices connected in a network and view networks map. Aug 31, 2018 A free choice—as long as you are willing to deal through outmoded software—is Sandaysoft’s Cumulus. Its interface recalls everyone lots of WeatherLink. Dated, nevertheless, incredibly influential. Sandaysoft speaks the software must work with Davis stations through the dongle, as well as some Fine Offset, Oregon Scientific, and La Crosse.
When it comes to a tool that combines a wide range of features, scalability, and ease-of-use at an affordable price, the network monitoring tool that really sticks out among the crowd this year is SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM).
Free Network Monitoring Software For Mac
Not only is NPM easy to install and maintain, it also comes with over a hundred pre-built reports out-of-the-box to get you up and running in no time. Need to schedule a custom network performance or availability report? No problem—the customization and automation features included in NPM can help you do that too.
With its exclusive PerfStack™ feature, you can more easily pinpoint and analyze the root cause of network issues. PerfStack allows you to drag and drop network performance data from multiple sources into a single chart to create a better view of what’s happening across your network.
What’s great about NPM is that it’s one of those tools that’s stuffed with “I-didn’t-know-it-could-do-that” features, like mapping your routes hop-by-hop through the network to remote services, creating wireless heatmaps, and automated network mapping based on detected network traffic.
Best Open-Source Network Monitoring Tool: Nagios Core
Nagios comes in two different flavors: Nagios Core is open-source and free with limited monitoring capabilities, and Nagios XI is the commercial network monitoring tool based on Nagios Core but with added features. The active development community and support for external plug-ins are some of the reasons for this tool’s popularity. One word of caution: beginner techs as well as organizations without sufficient IT support may find that installing, setting up, and configuring Nagios can be overwhelming. However, users can get help from the Nagios community or opt for a commercial support package from Nagios Enterprise.
Best for Smaller Orgs Dipping Their Toes into Network Monitoring: PRTG
For many folks, PRTG hits the right notes: small, cheap, and easy to wrap their heads around. It’s a good choice for organizations with little to no experience in network monitoring. You get a blend of infrastructure monitoring, flow and packet sniffing, and a REST-ful API to hook into if you like to dabble with customization.
Best Software for “It’s Midnight and I Need Something Installed and Working NOW”: ipMonitor
Monitoring is valuable. It’s important. It’s even, when done right, essential. But it’s not always easy to install, configure, or get working. Which is why—when the chips (and network devices) are down, and it’s late, and there’s an unwelcome crowd of executives demanding you find out what happened—it’s good to know there are tools like SolarWinds ipMonitor® out there. It installs typically in minutes on just about any machine you have lying around, including that spare laptop under your desk. It can connect to a vast array of network devices, perform a comprehensive set of tests, store data in a local database (so no additional software to configure or licenses to acquire), and has enough robust alerting to let you know what’s going wrong and where to look first. Tomorrow morning, when the dust has settled, you may finally be able to convince management that it’s time for a more robust solution, but right now, ipMonitor is going to get you the information you need in a pinch.
Honorable Mention: Free Network Monitoring Tools
When people talk about “free,” they typically mean “free” (but only for a certain amount of time) or “freemium” (where all the features you really want you have to pay for). But there are several network monitoring tools that are just “free-free.” Check out my list of the best FREE network monitoring tools for 2020.
The Mostly Un-Necessary Summary
As you can see, there are so many different network monitoring tools on the market today that can help solve almost any use case. If you are just beginning your search for the best network monitoring tool for the job, or already have one but are considering what else is out there, I hope this has helped you start to think about the benefits of finding the right tool to meet your needs. As for what I think is the best overall network monitoring tool in 2020, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is my pick based on the tool’s features, ease-of-use, and price.
Related Posts
The realm of Network Monitoring Tools, Software and Vendors is Huge, to say the least. New software, tools and utilities are being launched almost every year to compete in an ever changing marketplace of IT monitoring and server monitoring.
We've now in the new decade and as we're looking into 2020, you absolutely need a solution that fits all your criteria!
We've gone through as many tools as we could find and rounded up the best ones in easy to read format and highlighted their main strengths and why we think they are in the top class of tools to use in your IT infrastructure and business.
Some of the features we are looking for are Uptime/Downtime indicators, along with a robust and thorough alerting systems (via Email/SMS), custom templates and thresholds, Netflow and SNMP Integration, Automatic Network Topology Discovery and Mapping functionality, and much more.
The features from above were all major points of interest when evaluating software suites for this article and we'll try to keep this article as updated as possible with new feature sets and improvements as they are released, as newer versions of the tools below will likely be released throughout the years.
Here's a List of Top Network Monitoring Tools and Software of 2020:
Below you'll find an Updated list of the Latest Tools & Software to ensure your network is continuously tracked and monitored at all times of the day to ensure the highest up-times possible. Most of them have free Downloads or Trials to get you started for 15 to 30 days to ensure it meets your requirements.
1. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is easy to setup and can be ready in no time. The tool automatically discovers network devices and deploys within an hour. Its simple approach to oversee an entire network makes it one of the easiest to use and most intuitive user interfaces.
The product is highly customizable and the interface is easy to manage and change very quickly. You can customize the web-based performance dashboards, charts, and views. You can design a tailored topology for your entire network infrastructure. You can also create customized dependency-aware intelligent alerts and much more.
The software is sold by separate modules based on what you use. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Price starts from $1,995 and is a one-time license including 1st-year maintenance.
Solarwinds NPM has an Extensive Feature list that make it One of the Best Choices for Network Monitoring, including:
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2. PRTG Network Monitor from Paessler
PRTG Network Monitor software is commonly known for its advanced infrastructure management capabilities. All devices, systems, traffic, and applications in your network can be easily displayed in a hierarchical view that summarizes performance and alerts. PRTG monitors IT infrastructure using technology such as SNMP, WMI, SSH, Flows/Packet Sniffing, HTTP requests, REST APIs, Pings, SQL and a lot more.
It is one of the best choices for organizations with low experience in network monitoring. The user interface is really powerful and very easy to use.
A very particular feature of PRTG is its ability to monitor devices in the datacenter with a mobile app. A QR code that corresponds to the sensor is printed out and attached to the physical hardware. The mobile app is used to scan the code and a summary of the device is displayed on the mobile screen.
PRTG has a very flexible pricing plan, to get an idea visit their official pricing webpage below.
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3. ManageEngine OpManager
At its core, ManageEngine OpManager is an infrastructure management, network monitoring and Application Performance Management “APM” (with APM plug-in) software.
The product is well balanced when it comes to monitoring and analysis features.
The solution can manage your network, servers, network configuration and fault & performance; It can also analyze your network traffic. To run Manage Engine OpManager, it must be installed on-premises.
A highlight of this product is that it comes with pre-configured network monitor device templates. These contain pre-defined monitoring parameters and intervals for specific device types.
The essential edition product can be purchased for $595 which allows up to 25 devices.
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4. WhatsUp Gold 2017
WhatsUp Gold (WUG) is a network monitoring software from Ipswitch. It is one of the easiest to use and highly configurable tools in the market. The dashboards are user-friendly and visually attractive.
For daily IT management, WhatsUp Gold is a price/feature balanced network monitoring tool. It is also completely customizable. Dashboards can be customized to display your IT infrastructure and alerts to fit your requirements.
The highlights of the newest 2017 Plus version are hybrid cloud monitoring, real-time performance monitoring, automatic and manual failover and extended visibility to distributed networks.
WhatsUp Gold is limited for Windows OS support. This software comes with different pricing plans to adjust to your network and wallet. Compare different editions in their official website and ask for a price quote.
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5. Nagios XI
Nagios XI is aimed at a wide audience, from freelancers, SMBs (Small-to-Medium-Business), to large corporations. This makes Nagios’s XI pricing model one of the most flexible. They have a free version, open-source, one-time license and subscription. It is one of the few tools that allows an extreme flexibility (because of its adaptability to plug-ins) on what’s being monitored and alerted for a low cost.
Nagios XI focuses on monitoring. The key IT components that Nagios XI monitors are Network, Infrastructure, and Database. Although the software is easy to install, it will initially take some time to adjust to your requirements. This is because Nagios XI does not auto-discover devices. You have to configure each device that needs to be monitored with a configuration file.
Standard paid edition starts from $1,995 for 100 nodes. Nagios XI is supported only by Linux (or UNIX variants) OS.
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6. Zabbix
Zabbix is an open source monitoring tool. It is popular for its easy-to-use and pleasing Web GUI that is fully configurable. Zabbix focuses on monitoring and trending functionality. This software is frequently used for monitoring servers and network hardware. One of the highlights of Zabbix is that it can predict trends in your traffic. Zabbix can forecast future behavior based on historical data.
Since it is open source, it has an active user community spread around the world and good documentation. Zabbix gives the freedom to use the open-source solution without vendor lock-ins (including all components).
Zabbix is powerful for SMB networks below 1,000 nodes. Over that, the software can get slower and its performance decreased. Another disadvantage is that it doesn’t include real-time tests and reports.
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7. Incinga
It is another open source infrastructure and service monitoring tool. Icinga was developed in 2009 by the same team of developers that brought you Nagios.
It is a very easy to use and flexible tool for SMB and enterprise networks. The software focuses strongly on monitoring infrastructure and services. The tool also includes great threshold analysis and report/alert functionalities. ![]()
Icinga is popular at providing superior alters and reports of the general health of your IT infrastructure. All alert dependencies can be displayed in the dashboard and sent via email, SMS or mobile message applications.
Since Icinga is open source it is completely free. With its strong community forum, you can get all support you need.
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8. Datadog
It is a monitoring service specially designed for hybrid cloud environments. Datadog can also monitor the performance of network, apps, tools, and services.
One of the highlights of Datadog is that it can provide extensibility though many APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) with very good documentation.
The software is very easy to install and can be up and running in on time. To make it easy, agents can download and install the software. The agents are available for various different platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, Several Linux distributions, Docker, Chef, Puppet, etc.
You can create custom graphs, metrics, and alerts in an instant, and the software can adjust them dynamically based on different conditions. Datadog prices start from free (up to five hosts), Pro $15/per host, per month and Enterprise $23 /per host, per month.
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9. ConnectWise Automate
Formerly known as Labtech, ConnectWise Automate is a new cloud-based manager and monitoring solution that can keep track of your IT infrastructure devices from a single location.
ConnectWise Automate discovers all devices in your network so they can be monitored proactively. The network visibility is improved because the tool interprets problems and initiates an automatic pre-defined action to mitigate the issue.
A cool feature of this software is the “Patch Management”, as it allows you to protect all your systems with simultaneous patching from a centralized manager. Use Windows Patch management or third-party software.
By extending the ConnectWise suite, the software can also allow a premier remote control. You can resolve issues quickly by allowing remote support, remote access and even remote meetings.
ConnectWise Automate is aimed at SMBs. The price of the software is based on quotes. You can get a price on their official site tailored accordingly to the size of your network.
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10. Logic Monitor
LogicMonitor is an automated SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) IT performance monitoring tool. With LogicMonitor you can get full visibility of the performance and health of your network.
This software will automatically discover IT infrastructure devices and monitor them proactively. Besides from extraordinary monitoring capabilites, the software also improves the performance and health of your network. LogicMonitor can help identify incoming issues by providing predictive alters and trend analysis.
Logic Monitor is popular because it comes with a highly customizable dashboard, alerts, and reports. The software supports over 1000 different technologies, including hybrid cloud and networking devices, in order to provide granular performance metrics.
To get a price you can request a quote from LogicMonitor’s official pricing site.
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Free Network Monitoring Software For Mac 2019 Free11. OP5 Monitor
OP5 Monitor is OP5’s Enterprise level monitoring solution. With OP5 Monitor you can monitor applications, networks, servers and storage, regardless of location, whether that’s on-premise, hybrid or in a private/public cloud.
OP5 Monitor is also Nagios compatible, meaning that it’s easy to migrate from Nagios and re-use existing agents and plugins.
Key features include:
OP5 Monitor is free for up to 20 devices, and has a pricing plan based on your specific requirements.
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