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Network, refers to a group of interconnected computers to allow data exchange. And to make sure that network is constantly checked for slow or failing components, we need an adept Network Monitoring system in place.
Hence in this article, we have listed some of the best free network monitoring software in 2020.
PRTG Network Monitor is an all-inclusive monitoring software solution developed by Paessler. Equipped with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface with a cutting-edge monitoring engine, PRTG Network Monitor optimizes connections and workloads as well as reduces operational costs by avoiding outages while saving time and controlling service level agreements (SLAs). Dec 20, 2018 The Best Network Monitoring Software. Keeping your network running smoothly is critical in an age when the typical business is averaging more than half its software portfolio as cloud services.
Best Network Monitoring Software 2020
1. Microsoft Network Monitor –
Microsoft Network Monitor is one of the best free network monitoring software that allows to capture, view and analyze network traffic. This tool is very useful for troubleshooting network problems and applications on the network. The updated version is called Microsoft Message Analyzer.
Let’s have a look at the features of the same:
Mac server app adding computers. On your Mac, choose Apple menu Recent Items, then choose from the list of recent servers. In the Finder on your Mac, choose Go Connect to Server, click the pop-up menu to the far right of the Server Address field, then choose a recent server. Add shared computers, network areas, and workgroups to the Finder sidebar. Select the item, then choose File Add To Sidebar or press Command-T. In the Finder, choose Go Connect to Server, click the pop-up menu to the far right of the Server Address field, then choose a recent server. Add shared computers, network areas, and workgroups to the Finder sidebar. Select the item, then choose File Add To Sidebar. Add a shared computer or server to your list of favorites. Nov 28, 2016 Question: Q: How do I connect a windows PC to an apple server We have am Apple Network (Mac-mini running OSX10.9 with Server software) with the server storing all company files. A member of staff wants to connect to the network, a laptop (Surface Pro 4 running windows 10) to load and download certain files form the Server. Add macOS Server to your Mac from the Mac App Store for just $19.99. Your command center. MacOS Server lets you set up and manage multiple Mac computers and iOS devices, right from your Mac. MacOS Server lets you assign Volume Purchase Program (VPP) apps to devices — instead of a user’s Apple ID. This allows for the installation of VPP apps on iOS devices and Mac computers without configuring an Apple ID or sending an invitation. You can also migrate apps already installed on a device to a user’s Apple ID without deleting the app or user data.
- It supports the latest protocol parsers to capture, display, and analyze the protocol messaging traffic, events, and other system or application messages in troubleshooting and diagnostic scenarios.
- It is a powerful tool for capturing and analyzing protocol messages.
- Message Analyzer also allows you to load, aggregate, and analyze data from a log and saved trace files.
See Also: 10 Best PC Cleaner Software to Optimize Your System
2. OpenNMS –
OpenNMS is a freeware and one of the best monitoring software available in 2020.Let’s look at the features:
- It offers event and notification management, discovery and provisioning, service monitoring, and data collection.
- It provides path outage support and automatic acknowledgment of self-clearing problems
- OpenNMS includes a client app for the iOS which gives you the ability to view outages, nodes, alarms.
3. Advanced IP Scanner –
Yet another good tool for network monitoring for free and the best part is, it doesn’t require installation. Let’s look at its features:
- It is a reliable network scanner to analyze LAN and exports the scan results to CSV.
- The software shows all network devices, gives you access to shared folders, provides remote control of computers (via RDP and Radmin).
- It can also remotely switch the computers off.
4. NAGIOS CORE
Nagios Core is one of the best free network monitoring software which serves as the basic event scheduler, event processor, and alert manager for elements that are monitored. Let’s look at its features:
- It has the capabilities to monitor applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, system metrics and infrastructure components with a single tool.
- It shows trending and capacity planning add-ons to ensure you’re aware of aging infrastructure.
- It has escalation capabilities that make sure the alert notifications reach to the right people.
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5. CACTI –
Cacti is a network monitoring tool that enables you to collect data from nearly any network element, including routing and switching systems, firewalls, load balancers, and servers, and put that data into robust graphs. Let’s look at the features of the same:
- It contains a “data input” mechanism which allows you to define custom scripts that can be used to gather data.
- It enables you to get the tree view which allows users to create “graph hierarchies” and place graphs on the tree making it easy to organize a large number of graphs.
- It has user-based management which allows the administrators to create users and assign different levels of permissions to the cacti interface.
6. WIRESHARK-Network Monitoring Software
Wireshark is one of the best free network monitoring software which allows you to keep an eye on what is happening on the network at microscopic levels.
Let’s have a look at the features:
- It provides deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time.
- It runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD and more.
- It provides Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
7. ZABBIX
Zabbix is an open-source networking tool which also happens to be a freeware which enables you to monitor millions of metrics collected from tens of thousands of servers, virtual machines and network devices at real-time.Let’s have a look at the features:
- Though, it is very difficult to setup but very easy to manage due to its clear and clutter-free interface.
- It supports a number of databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, and IBM DB2.
- Zabbix VMware’s monitoring capabilities allow you to customize using any scripting or programming language.
See Also: 10 Best Disk Defrag Software for Windows
8. Capsa Free
One of the best network monitoring software, Capsa Free, is a network analyzer that allows you to monitor network traffic, troubleshoot network issues and analyze packets. Let’s have a look at the features:
No support, they dont return emails, and its beeen nearly a year since this app has had an update, its still at version 1.0!I do not reccomend anybody to by this software or any software from this developer until they change the way they do business. Oh how I wish the developers of the live cams pro ios app would develop a mac app. Hootoo ip camera software mac. Barein, App works but developer ignores problem report.While this app appears to work fine it will flood your system log with thousands upon thousands of 'CFNetwork internal error” messages.
- It provides support for over 300 network protocols (with the ability to create and customize protocols), which makes it easy for the admin to keep an eye on every network activity.
- It accurately detects DoS (DDoS) attack, Worm activity, ARP attack, TCP port scanning and suspicious conversation and locates the source and target in real-time.
- It captures all network packets transmitted on the network and displays detailed packet decoding information in Hex, ASCII, and EBCDIC.
9. NTOP
NTOP now called as NTOPNG(NTOP of new generation), is a network traffic probe that monitors network usage. Let’s have a look at its features:
- It supports a NetFlow-sFlow emitter-collector, a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRDtool (RRD) for persistently storing traffic statistics.
- It can analyze traffic even at 10G speed. Moreover, it can report on IP addresses, volume, and bytes for each transaction.
- Ntop can integrate with external monitoring applications such as Nagios for alerting, and provide data for monitoring.
10. NMAP
NMAP (Network Mapper) is one of the best open source and free network monitoring software used for network discovery and security auditing. Let’s have a look at its features:
- It supports many advanced techniques for mapping out networks filled with IP filters, firewalls, routers, and other obstacles.
- It is multi-platform, it supports Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, Mac OS X, HP-UX, NetBSD, Sun OS, Amiga, and more.
- Nmap is the tool that you should use when you need to quickly map the hosts in your network.
These were some of the best and free network monitoring software we could list and hope you find it useful! If we have missed any good names that deserve to be here, please let us know in the comments section below.
Also Read: Software Updater For Windows
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Here are 20 of the best free tools for monitoring devices, services, ports or protocols and analyzing traffic on your network. This list is intended to supplement 101 Free SysAdmin Tools. Even if you may have heard of some of these tools before, I’m confident that you’ll find a gem or two amongst this list.
1. GFI LanGuard (our award-winning paid solution)
People say it’s good to be modest and not to brag, but we’re so proud of our network management tool that we had to start the list with GFI LanGuard. You can use it to scan both small and large networks, in search of software vulnerabilities and unpatched or unlicensed applications. Information coming from up to 60,000 devices, running on Windows, Mac OS or Linux, will be shown in a centralized web console, so you’ll be able to see the state of your whole network at any moment and from any location.
With centralized patch management and network auditing, GFI LanGuard prevents potential compliance issues, but if you’re a sysadmin the fact that all machines are patched and secured will surely seem like a more important advantage. But, don’t take our word for it, download the free 30-day trial and try it out.
2. Microsoft Message Analyzer
Microsoft Message Analyzer, the successor to Microsoft Network Monitor 3.4, has an intuitive and flexible UI with effective filtering options that allow you to break down and drill into captured packets (or ‘messages’ as they are called in Message Analyzer). By adding ‘Color Rules’ to different protocol traffic, you can make scanning through areas of interest easier and faster.
Some of its highlighted features include automated data capture (using PowerShell cmdlets to start or stop traces based on a particular trigger), TLS/SSL decryption support and customizable filter expressions.
Microsoft Message Analyzer allows you to assess multiple log data sources from a single pane of glass. You can capture, view and analyze network protocol traffic side-by-side with other system or application events (e.g., Event Logs or SQL Tables), making it a valuable addition to your network toolkit.
When you launch Microsoft Message Analyzer, click ‘Start Local Trace’ to immediately start capturing traffic from the local machine, or ‘New Session’ to add a Data Source to capture.
3. Nagios
Nagios is a powerful network monitoring tool that helps you to ensure that your critical systems, applications, and services are always up and running. It provides features such as alerting, event handling, and reporting. Nagios Core is the heart of the application that contains the core monitoring engine and a basic web UI. On top of Nagios Core, you can implement plugins that will allow you to monitor services, applications, and metrics, a chosen frontend as well as add-ons for data visualization, graphs, load distribution, and MySQL database support, amongst others.
Once you’ve installed and configured Nagios, launch the Web UI and begin to configure host groups and service groups. Once Nagios has had some time to monitor the status of the specified hosts and services, it can start to paint a picture of what the health of your systems look like.
4. OpenNMS
OpenNMS is an open source enterprise-grade network management application that offers automated discovery, event and notification management, performance measurement, and service assurance features. OpenNMS includes a client app for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch for on-the-go access, giving you the ability to view outages, nodes, alarms and add an interface to monitor.
Once you successfully login to the OpenNMS web UI, use the dashboard to get a quick ‘snapshot view’ of any outages, alarms or notifications. You can drill down and get more information about any of these sections from the Status drop-down menu. The Reports section allows you to generate reports to send by e-mail or download as a PDF.
5. Advanced IP Scanner
Advanced IP Scanner is a fast and easy to use network scanner that detects any network devices (including wireless devices such as mobile phones, printers, and WIFI routers) on your network. It allows you to connect to common services such as HTTP, FTP and shared folders if they are enabled on the remote machine. You are also able to wake up and shut down remote computers.
The installer allows you to fully install the application on your machine or run the portable version. When you launch Advanced IP Scanner, start by going to Settings > Options to select which resources to scan and how fast/accurate you want the results. You can then choose which subnet to scan and proceed with pressing the “Scan” button. Once the scan is complete, expand the results to see which resources you can connect to for each discovered device or export your results to XML/HTML/CSV.
6. Capsa Free
Capsa Free is a network analyzer that allows you to monitor network traffic, troubleshoot network issues and analyze packets. Features include support for over 300 network protocols (including the ability to create and customize protocols), MSN and Yahoo Messenger filters, email monitor and auto-save, and customizable reports and dashboards.
When you launch Capsa, choose the adapter you want it to bind to and click “Start” to initiate the capture process. Use the tabs in the main window to view the dashboard, a summary of the traffic statistics, the TCP/UDP conversations, as well as packet analysis.
7. Telerik Fiddler
Fiddler is a web debugging tool that captures HTTP traffic between chosen computers and the Internet. It allows you to analyze incoming and outgoing data to monitor and modify requests and responses before they hit the browser. Fiddler gives you extremely detailed information about HTTP traffic and can be used for testing the performance of your websites or security testing of your web applications (e.g., Fiddler can decrypt HTTPS traffic).
When you launch Fiddler, HTTP traffic will start to be captured automatically. To toggle traffic capturing, hit F12. You can choose which processes you wish to capture HTTP traffic for by clicking on “All Processes” in the bottom status bar, or by dragging the “Any Process” icon from the top menu bar onto an open application.
8. NetworkMiner
NetworkMiner captures network packets and then parses the data to extract files and images, helping you to reconstruct events that a user has taken on the network – it can also do this by parsing a pre-captured PCAP file. You can enter keywords which will be highlighted as network packets are being captured. NetworkMiner is classed as a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) that can obtain information such as hostname, operating system and open ports from hosts.
In the example above, I set NetworkMiner to capture packets, opened a web browser and searched for “soccer” as a keyword on Google Images. The images displayed in the Images tab are what I saw during my browser session.
When you load NetworkMiner, choose a network adapter to bind to and hit the “Start” button to initiate the packet capture process.
9. Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS is a performance monitoring, network monitoring, and availability management tool that keeps an eye on servers, applications and communications. It has an advanced event correlation system that allows you to create alerts based on events from different sources and notify administrators before an issue escalates.
When you login to the Pandora FMS Web UI, start by going to the ‘Agent detail’ and ‘Services’ node from the left-hand navigation pane. From here, you can configure monitoring agents and services.
10. Zenoss Core
Zenoss Core is a powerful open source IT monitoring platform that monitors applications, servers, storage, networking, and virtualization to provide availability and performance statistics. It also has a high-performance event handling system and an advanced notification system.
Once you login to Zenoss Core Web UI for the first time, you are presented with a two-step wizard that asks you to create user accounts and add your first few devices/hosts to monitor. You are then taken directly to the Dashboard tab. Use the Dashboard, Events, Infrastructure, Reports and Advanced tabs to configure Zenoss Core and review reports and events that need attention.
11. PRTG Network Monitor Freeware
PRTG Network Monitor monitors network availability and network usage using a variety of protocols including SNMP, Netflow, and WMI. It is a powerful tool that offers an easy to use web-based interface and apps for iOS and Android. Amongst others, PRTG Network Monitor’s key features include:
(1) Comprehensive Network Monitoring which offers more than 170 sensor types for application monitoring, virtual server monitoring, SLA monitoring, QoS monitoring
(2) Flexible Alerting, including nine different notification methods, status alerts, limit alerts, threshold alerts, conditional alerts, and alert scheduling
(3) In-Depth Reporting, including the ability to create reports in HTML/PDF format, scheduled reports, as well as pre-defined reports (e.g., Top 100 Ping Times) and report templates.
Note: The Freeware version of PRTG Network Monitor is limited to 100 sensors.
When you launch PRTG Network Monitor, head straight to the configuration wizard to get started. This wizard will run you through the main configuration settings required to get the application up and running, including the adding of servers to monitors and which sensors to use.
12. MiTeC Network Scanner
MiTeC Network Scanner is a modest yet feature rich network scanner for detecting network devices which include remote command execution and shutdown functionality, as well as Active Directory scanning and a bunch of in-built network tools as some of its key features.
When you launch MiTeC Network Scanner, start by selecting one of the scans to run from the Scan section on the top ribbon.
13. Splunk
Splunk is a data collection and analysis platform that allows you to monitor, gather and analyze data from different sources on your network (e.g., event logs, devices, services, TCP/UDP traffic, etc.). You can set up alerts to notify you when something is wrong or use Splunk’s extensive search, reporting, and dashboard features to make the most of the collected data. Splunk also allows you to install ‘Apps’ to extend system functionality.
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Note: When you first download and install Splunk, it automatically installs the Enterprise version for you to trial for 60 days before switching to the Free version. To switch to the free version straight away, go to Manager > Licensing.
When you login to the Splunk web UI for the first time, add a data source and configure your indexes to get started. Once you do this, you can then create reports, build dashboards, and search and analyze data.
14. Angry IP Scanner
Free Network Monitoring Software For Mac
Angry IP Scanner is a standalone application that facilitates IP address and port scanning. It is used to scan a range of IP addresses to find hosts that are alive and obtain information about them (including MAC address, open ports, hostname, ping time, NetBIOS information, etc.).
When you execute the application, go to Tools > Preferences to configure Scanning and Port options, then go to Tools > Fetchers to choose what information to gather from each scanned IP address.
15. Icinga 2
Icinga is a Linux based fully open source monitoring application which checks the availability of network resources and immediately notifies users when something goes down. Icinga provides business intelligence data for in-depth analysis and a powerful command line interface.
When you first launch the Icinga web UI, you are prompted for credentials. Once you’ve authenticated, use the navigation menu on the left-hand side to manage the configuration of hosts, view the dashboard, reports, see a history of events, and more.
16. Observium Community
Observium Community is an intuitive SNMP-based network management and monitoring tool that auto-discovers devices on your network and reports back on their status. It runs on Linux and supports a multitude of device types, platforms and operating systems including Cisco, F5, Citrix, Juniper, Windows, Linux and more.
Start by adding devices to monitor either manually or via the auto-discovery feature, which probes the network looking for SNMP configured devices. After devices have been added, go to the Overview page to review the status of each device.
17. NetXMS
NetXMS is multi-platform network management and monitoring system that offers event management, performance monitoring, alerting, reporting and graphing for the entire IT infrastructure model. NetXMS’s main features include support for multiple operating systems and database engines, distributed network monitoring, auto-discovery, and business impact analysis tools, amongst others. NetXMS gives you the option to run a web-based interface or a management console.
Once you login to NetXMS you need to first go to the “Server Configuration” window to change a few settings that are dependent on your network requirements (e.g., changing the number of data collection handlers or enabling network discovery). You can then run the Network Discovery option for NetXMS to discover devices on your network automatically, or add new nodes by right-clicking on “Infrastructure Services” and selecting Tools > Create Node.
18. WirelessNetView
WirelessNetView is a lightweight utility (available as a standalone executable or installation package) that monitors the activity of reachable wireless networks and displays information related to them, such as SSID, Signal Quality, MAC Address, Channel Number, Cipher Algorithm, etc.
As soon as you execute WirelessNetView, it automatically populates a list of all reachable Wi-Fi networks in the area and displays information relevant to them (all columns are enabled by default).
Note: Wireless Network Watcher is a small utility that goes hand in hand with WirelessNetView. It scans your wireless network and displays a list of all computers and devices that are currently connected, showing information such as IP address, MAC address, computer name and NIC card manufacturer – all of which can be exported to an HTML/XML/csv/txt file.
19. Riverbed Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector
Riverbed Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector can be used to search for Wi-Fi networks, manage and troubleshoot connections, verify Wi-Fi coverage, locate Wi-Fi devices and detect rogue Access Points. Riverbed Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector comes with a built-in connection, quality and speed tests.
Once you launch Wi-Fi Inspector and choose an adapter, a list of available Wi-Fi connections is displayed in the “Networks” pane. Details related to your current Wi-Fi connection are shown in the top right-hand corner. Everything pretty much happens from the top ribbon bar – you can run a test, change the layout, edit settings, refresh connections, etc.
20. Wireshark
This list wouldn’t be complete without the ever-popular Wireshark. Wireshark is an interactive network protocol analyzer and capture utility. It provides for in-depth inspection of hundreds of protocols and runs on multiple platforms.
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When you launch Wireshark, choose which interface you want to bind to and click the green shark fin icon to get going. Packets will immediately start to be captured. Once you’ve collected what you need, you can export the data to a file for analysis in another application or use the inbuilt filter to drill down and analyze the captured packets at a deeper level from within Wireshark itself.
Are there any free tools not on this list that you’ve found useful and would like to share with the community?
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