Effective network monitoring is crucial for maintaining the performance and reliability of today’s complex IT environments. With the precise tools, network administrators can proactively discover and resolve issues before they impact end-users. On this blog post, we’ll explore a few of the perfect network monitoring solutions available, including each cloud-based platforms and open-source options.
Auvik is a cloud-based network monitoring and management platform designed to offer IT teams full visibility and control over their networks. It automates many complex and time-consuming network management tasks, allowing administrators to work more efficiently. By providing real-time network mapping, detailed device information, and intelligent alerts, Auvik enables IT professionals to proactively monitor network health and quickly troubleshoot issues.
Considered one of Auvik’s standout capabilities is its ability to mechanically discover and inventory all devices on the network inside minutes of deployment. It creates dynamic, interactive topology maps that visualize physical and logical connections between devices. Auvik also provides in-depth traffic evaluation to simply discover who’s on the network, what they’re doing, and where their traffic goes. With features like automated config backups and an intuitive dashboard to access key network data from anywhere, Auvik is a comprehensive tool to streamline network management.
Key features of Auvik include:
- Automated network discovery and inventory that gives a whole view of all network devices
- Dynamic network mapping to visualise physical and logical network topology
- Intelligent network traffic evaluation to observe bandwidth usage and discover traffic patterns
- Automated configuration backups and straightforward restore to quickly recuperate from network issues
- Extensive integrations with popular IT platforms and a strong API to construct custom workflows
SolarWinds is a number one provider of powerful and inexpensive IT management software. Their flagship product for network monitoring known as Network Performance Monitor (NPM). NPM is designed to supply comprehensive network monitoring capabilities that allow IT professionals to quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages.
SolarWinds NPM can mechanically discover network devices and begin monitoring them inside hours of deployment. It provides real-time visibility into the health and performance of routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, wireless access points, and every other SNMP-enabled devices. NPM uses a web-based interface with customizable dashboards, views, and charts to present critical performance metrics at a look. It also includes advanced alerting capabilities to notify administrators of issues before they impact end-users.
Along with NPM, SolarWinds offers several other tools that reach its network monitoring capabilities. NetFlow Traffic Analyzer provides detailed visibility into bandwidth usage by application, protocol, and IP address group. Network Configuration Manager automates network configuration and alter management. IP Address Manager streamlines IP address management with integrated DHCP and DNS servers. Taken together, these tools provide a comprehensive and scalable network monitoring solution.
Key features of SolarWinds network monitoring tools include:
- Automated network discovery and mapping to quickly inventory devices and visualize topology
- Customizable dashboards, views, and reports to present key performance metrics and health data
- Over 1200 pre-built templates for monitoring Cisco, HP, Dell, Juniper, and other network device vendors
- Advanced alerting with dynamic baseline thresholds and dependencies to scale back false alarms
- PerfStack performance evaluation dashboard for simple cross-stack data correlation and root cause identification
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is a SaaS-based infrastructure monitoring platform that gives unified visibility into complex and hybrid IT environments. It offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities across networks, servers, cloud resources, applications, and more. By collecting metrics, logs, and traces through an agentless collector architecture, LogicMonitor delivers real-time insights into the health and performance of your entire technology stack.
Considered one of LogicMonitor’s key strengths is its ability to mechanically discover and monitor devices inside minutes of deployment. It creates dynamic topology maps to visualise relationships between critical resources. LogicMonitor also leverages AI and machine learning for advanced capabilities like anomaly detection, forecasting, and intelligent alerting. With customizable dashboards, pre-configured alert thresholds, and extensive integrations, LogicMonitor optimizes digital experiences while consolidating tools and reducing operational overhead.
Key features of LogicMonitor include:
- Automated discovery and monitoring of devices, cloud resources, and applications
- Dynamic topology mapping to visualise relationships and dependencies
- AI-driven insights for anomaly detection, forecasting, and smart alerting
- Customizable dashboards and reporting for tailored views of key metrics
- Extensive integrations with 2000+ technologies and open API for custom data sources
Nagios
Nagios is a strong open-source IT infrastructure monitoring tool that permits organizations to discover and resolve problems before they impact critical business processes. Originally developed under the name NetSaint in 1999, Nagios has evolved to turn into one of the crucial widely used monitoring platforms, with hundreds of projects and plugins extending its core functionality. Nagios runs natively on Linux and other Unix-like systems but can be deployed on Windows using virtualization.
At its core, Nagios is designed to observe hosts, services, and network devices. It uses a server-client architecture where plugins run on distant hosts to gather data and send it back to the Nagios server for processing. When issues are detected, Nagios can send alerts via email, SMS, or other notification channels to IT staff, allowing them to quickly reply to outages or performance problems. Nagios also provides a web-based interface for viewing monitoring status, generating reports, and managing configuration.
Beyond its core monitoring engine, the Nagios ecosystem includes several other tools to increase its capabilities. Nagios XI provides an enterprise-grade web interface, advanced visualizations, and features like capability planning and audit logging. Nagios Fusion allows centralized viewing of multiple Nagios instances. Nagios Log Server enables log monitoring and evaluation, while Nagios Network Analyzer provides NetFlow-based traffic evaluation.
Key features of Nagios include:
- Comprehensive monitoring of IT infrastructure components including servers, network devices, applications, and services
- Flexible, plugin-based architecture that permits monitoring of virtually any resource
- Centralized view of monitoring status via web interface with user-specific views and dashboards
- Proactive alerting via multiple channels to make sure rapid response to issues
- Extensible ecosystem with add-ons for log monitoring, network evaluation, configuration management, and more
Zabbix
Zabbix is a mature and feature-rich open-source network monitoring solution designed for monitoring the supply and performance of IT infrastructure components including servers, network devices, virtual machines and cloud services. It provides a centralized monitoring system that permits real-time monitoring of hundreds of metrics collected from servers, network devices and applications.
Considered one of Zabbix’s key strengths is its flexibility and extensibility. It may monitor a big selection of devices and systems using multiple methods including Zabbix agent, SNMP, IPMI, JMX and custom checks. Zabbix also provides powerful data visualization capabilities including custom graphs, network maps, dashboards and reports. With features like anomaly detection, predictive analytics and auto-discovery of devices, Zabbix helps IT teams proactively monitor their infrastructure and quickly troubleshoot issues.
Key features of Zabbix include:
- Distributed monitoring with support for distant Zabbix proxies for monitoring across multiple locations
- Agentless monitoring using multiple protocols including SNMP, IPMI, JMX, SSH and Telnet
- Powerful data visualization with custom graphs, network maps, dashboards and slideshows
- Flexible alerting with customizable escalation scenarios and multiple notification channels
- Auto-discovery for automatic registration of latest devices and application of appropriate monitoring templates
Datadog is a comprehensive cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform designed to supply real-time visibility into modern IT environments. It enables organizations to observe their entire infrastructure, including servers, databases, applications, network devices, and cloud services. By collecting, searching, and analyzing metrics, traces, and logs across fully distributed architectures, Datadog empowers IT teams to proactively detect and resolve performance issues before they impact end-users.
Datadog supports over 600 technologies and services out-of-the-box. This permits seamless data collection from various sources, providing a holistic view of the IT ecosystem. Datadog also offers customizable dashboards, intelligent alerts, and collaboration features, enabling teams to efficiently monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize their systems. With its scalable architecture and versatile deployment options, Datadog caters to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
Key features of Datadog include:
- Real-time monitoring of servers, containers, databases, and cloud services, with auto-discovery and detailed performance metrics
- End-to-end tracing of requests across distributed systems, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing application performance
- Centralized log collection, indexing, and evaluation, with powerful search and filtering capabilitiesÂ
- Visibility into network traffic, analyzing communication between services, containers, and cloud environmentsÂ
- Customizable dashboards for visualizing key metrics in real-time
AdRem NetCrunch is a comprehensive network monitoring and management solution designed to supply real-time visibility into IT infrastructure. It offers a big selection of features to streamline network monitoring, including auto-discovery of devices, performance monitoring, customizable dashboards, and an intuitive alerting system. NetCrunch runs on Windows and provides an agentless approach to monitoring, making it easy to deploy and scale.
NetCrunch mechanically discovers and maps network devices, making a dynamic, interactive network atlas. This permits IT teams to visualise their network topology, discover dependencies, and quickly locate the foundation reason behind issues. NetCrunch supports monitoring of varied devices and systems, including servers, network devices, applications, virtual environments, and cloud services.
Key features of AdRem NetCrunch:
- Agentless monitoring using protocols like SNMP, WMI, and SSH
- Automatic network discovery and interactive topology mapping
- Customizable dashboards and alerts for tailored network insights
- Supports monitoring of servers, network devices, VMs, and cloud services
- Extensive reporting and integration with IT management platforms
Observium is an open-source network monitoring and management platform that gives auto-discovery capabilities to mechanically detect and monitor devices on the network, including servers, switches, routers, and more. Observium supports a big selection of device types and operating systems, similar to Cisco, Windows, Linux, HP, Juniper, Dell, and others.
Observium boasts a user-friendly web interface, which presents network data through customizable dashboards, graphs, and reports. It collects data using SNMP and stores it using RRD (Round-Robin Database), enabling efficient storage and retrieval of historical performance metrics. Observium also provides alerting features to notify administrators of potential issues or performance degradations.
Key features of Observium:
- Automatic discovery of network devices for simple setup and monitoring
- Support for a big selection of device types and operating systems
- Customizable dashboards and graphs for data visualization
- Alerting system to notify administrators of potential issues
- Scalable architecture to observe large and complicated network environments
Domotz is a comprehensive cloud-based network monitoring and management software designed for MSPs, IT professionals, and enterprises. It provides real-time visibility and control over IT infrastructure, enabling users to work more efficiently, increase productivity, and resolve issues faster. Domotz offers a user-friendly interface and automatic features similar to network discovery, topology mapping, and device inventory.
Domotz can monitor a big selection of devices, including servers, workstations, printers, routers, switches, firewalls, and IoT devices, whatever the manufacturer. It supports various monitoring protocols like SNMP, WMI, and SSH. Domotz also provides secure distant access to devices for troubleshooting, in addition to network configuration management with backup and restore capabilities.
Key features of Domotz:
- Automated network discovery, inventory, and topology mapping
- Supports monitoring of diverse devices across multiple sites and networks
- Secure distant access for troubleshooting and issue resolution
- Network configuration management with backup, restore and alter alerts
- Intuitive web-based interface with customizable dashboards and reporting
AKIPS
AKIPS is a strong and scalable network monitoring software designed to supply comprehensive visibility into large enterprise network infrastructures. It offers a fully-featured, fast, and cost-effective solution for monitoring network performance, enabling network engineers to proactively discover and resolve issues before they impact business operations. AKIPS can monitor over a million interfaces and 500,000 flows per second from a single server, making it one of the crucial scalable network monitoring tools available on the market.
Considered one of the standout features of AKIPS is its ability to supply real-time insights and historical data all the way down to one-minute granularity for up to 3 years. This permits network administrators to quickly discover the foundation reason behind issues and make informed decisions. AKIPS also offers automated device discovery, adaptive polling, syslog and SNMP trap management, NetFlow evaluation, and configuration management capabilities, providing a comprehensive toolkit for network monitoring and management.
Key one-line features of AKIPS:
- Scalable architecture monitoring over 1 million interfaces from a single server
- Real-time insights and three years of historical data at 1-minute granularity
- Automated network discovery and adaptive polling optimizing SNMP traffic
- Advanced syslog, SNMP trap management and alerting for proactive issue detection
- NetFlow evaluation with as much as 500k flows/sec and configuration management tools
The Bottom Line
Selecting the precise network monitoring tool is important for keeping your IT infrastructure running easily. Whether you decide for a comprehensive cloud-based platform, a versatile open-source solution, or a mix of tools, having real-time visibility into your network’s performance is crucial. Consider your organization’s specific needs, budget, and existing IT ecosystem when choosing a monitoring solution. By implementing the precise tool or combination of tools, you’ll be able to proactively discover and resolve issues, optimize network performance, and ensure a seamless experience in your end-users.
