PRTG Network Monitor

A powerful network monitoring utility for beginners and advanced users alike.

Pros: The PRTG Network Monitor is a network monitoring utility which comes bundled with a host of features, that makes it a really powerful tool. Advanced users will like all the functionality that is available to them. Beginners will like the fact that it is fairly easy and intuitive to use, and also that it looks good. The web-based interface really is one of the high points for this utility, because network monitoring utilities are not usually blessed with nifty interfaces.

The software is able to monitor network uptime and downtime; it performs packet sniffing with decoding and presents these for viewing and analysis; advanced analysis and reporting features are part of this package; and a number of graphical utilities for visual presentation of the collected monitoring information. The following most common data acquisition methods are supported in addition to packet sniffing: SNMP queries (and downloading of MIBs), WMI, and NetFlow. A host of supported network services and protocols: SMTP, PING, HTTP, POP / POP3, FTP, PPP, etc. Outages are reported automatically via email, SMS, paging and other available means. Reporting functions include those for performance, reliability analysis, SLA validation and more. The free edition allows the monitoring of up to 10 sensors.

Cons: There are no real limitations for the PRTG Network Monitor.

Overall: 5 stars. A wonderful tool, a host of features and even an attractive interface. What more could one ask for.

An advanced, easy-to-use monitoring solution for your entire network. The software's features include: up/downtime monitoring, traffic and usage monitoring, packet sniffing, failover clustering, in-depth analysis and concise reporting. A user-friendly web-based interface allows users to quickly auto-discover and configure the network devices and sensors they wish to monitor. All common methods for acquiring network usage data are supported: SNMP and WMI, Packet Sniffing and NetFlow. It also offers SMTP/IMAP Roundtrip-Email Monitoring and VMware Monitoring, VoIP Monitoring, Toplists for Packet Sniffing and Netflow Sensors, as well as sensor aggregation using its built-in Sensor Factory. PRTG Network Monitor includes more than 80 sensor types for all common network services (e.g. PING, HTTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP, SSH etc.), allowing users to monitor networks for availability, speed and failures. As soon as an outage occurs, alerts are sent via email, SMS, pager messages and other means. Request times and downtimes are recorded in an internal database, making it easy to compile performance, downtime and SLA reports. Monitoring, reporting and notifications can be automatically scheduled at specific times. High Availability is guaranteed by the innovative failover cluster, and remote probes can be used for easy multi-location monitoring. Network maps can be created which provide users with a unique visual network management tool. PRTG Network Monitor's Freeware Edition is completely free for personal and commercial use. The Commercial Editions are required if you want to monitor more than ten sensors.