The Best Network Device Monitoring Tools

A Network Monitoring Tool is a program that drags useful information from different parts of the network. It will make it easier to run and manage the network. Performance monitoring, fault monitoring, and account monitoring will be at the center of network monitoring.

Here is our list of the best network device monitoring tools:

1. Auvik – EDITOR’S CHOICE A network management tool that implements network discovery, device documentation, network mapping, and constant device status checking. The system also provides network traffic analysis. Delivered as a cloud-based SaaS package and available for a 14-day free trial.
2. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (FREE TRIAL) It is made to provide complete monitoring and management of network faults and performance, and it can grow and change to meet your needs. Start a 30-day free trial.
3. ManageEngine OpManager A network monitor that is based on SNMP and has great options for how to lay out the network topology.
4. Site24x7 Network Monitoring Site24x7 is a cloud-based website and server monitoring platform that helps small to large businesses keep an eye on their websites, servers, clouds, networks, applications, and real-time users.
5. Datadog Network Monitoring Provides excellent visibility into each of your network’s components, as well as the connections that connect them all.
6. Checkmk This version is for professionals, and the Checkmk Micro Core replaces Nagios at its core. It has a few extra features as well. For this edition, you can get help from a professional.
7. Progress WhatsUp Gold This monitoring tool sends out what are called MIBs, which are requests for status reports, regularly.

It is used to look at things like applications, email servers, and so on. It sends a signal, or Ping, to the different system ports to look at the network or its internal parts. When choosing a network monitoring tool for your IT environment, it is important to think about both your current needs and what you might need in the future. This is because it is very important to choose the right tool out of the many that are available. Almost every year, new IT monitoring, server monitoring, and system monitoring software, tools, and utilities come out to compete in a market that changes all the time.

Here in this article, after doing deep research we have reviewed the best network monitoring tools, to make it easy for you to choose.

The Best Network Device Monitoring Tools

1. Auvik (FREE TRIAL)

The cloud-based network management software from Auvik makes sure that IT networks all over the world work well. Auvik helps an IT team’s efficiency and capacity go through the roof by automating and making network management easier. It also protects the business from network risk. Real-time mapping and inventory of networks: Find and check out new networks quickly. Then, stay in the loop. Even if your users and devices move, you’ll always know where everything is.

Key features:

• The monitoring of networks on multiple sites is centralized.
• Keeps an eye on the status of network devices
• Provides two plans: Essential and Performance
• Traffic analysis of the network is part of the higher plan.
• Monitors both real networks and virtual LANs

The system of thresholds in Auvik’s network monitoring system makes it possible for it to be automated. Most of the metrics that the network monitor keeps an eye on already have thresholds built into the service. There is also the option to set your thresholds.

The Auvik service can be made better by using third-party tools that integrate with the network monitor. Auvik has two different types of plans: Essential and Performance. The Performance plan is the higher plan, and in addition to the network monitoring services that come with the Essentials plan, it also has functions for traffic analysis and Syslog management.

Auvik’s processing power comes from the cloud servers that run the service. But each site that is being watched needs to have a collector installed. Both Windows Server and Ubuntu Linux can run this software. The collector can also be run on a virtual machine (VM). No matter where the collector is, the system manager can still use any standard Web browser to get to the service’s console, which is based on the Auvik server.

Auvik’s service starts with a process called “network discovery”. All of the basic information that the monitor needs to work will be filled in automatically. Since the discovery service runs all the time, it will notice when new devices join the network.

You can register for a 14-day free trial.

2. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (FREE TRIAL)

SolarWinds is one of the top companies in the world that makes software for IT management. One of its most important products is the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM). The main goal of this system is to check the health of the devices that are connected to a network.

Key features:

• Dashboard for analyzing your network’s most important data points and paths that is easy to use
• Robust alerting system with options for simple and complex triggers
• With their New Network InsightTM for CISCO ASA, you can keep an eye on CISCO ASA networks.
• Check your Cisco ASA’s ACLs, VPN, interface, and monitor.
• Firewall Rules Browser lets you check on firewall rules.

SolarWinds makes several infrastructure management systems, including the Network Performance Manager. All of these systems are written on a platform called Orion, which is shared by all of them. If you buy all of the Orion-based software at the same time, they will all work together because they share data and modules. Users can collect and view real-time and historical statistics from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and any other SNMP, API, or WMI-enabled devices directly from a web browser.

It can be changed in many ways, and the interface is easy to use and can be changed quickly. You can change how the performance dashboards, charts, and views look on the web. You can design a topology for your whole network infrastructure that fits your needs. You can also make smart alerts that take into account dependencies and do a lot more.

You can try SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor through a free and fully functional 30-day free trial.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Download a 30-day FREE Trial

3. ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is an integrated solution for network management that makes network management easy and effective. It lets network and IT administrators do several things at once, such as monitoring network performance, analyzing bandwidth, managing configuration, managing firewalls, monitoring storage, managing IP addresses (IPAM), and managing switch ports (SPM).

Key features:

• Acts as an SNMP manager and constantly checks the health status of devices.
• Gets SNMP Traps and sends out alerts when a device has a problem.
• Sets up performance limits and finds system problems.
• Keeps an eye on the availability of resources.
• Live data dials and graphs that can be changed to fit your needs.
• Alerts are sent to people by email or SMS.

When it comes to tools for managing networks, this one has a good mix of features for monitoring and analyzing. The solution can take care of your network, servers, network configuration, network faults, and performance, and it can also look at the traffic on your network. Manage Engine OpManager has to be installed on-premises so that it can be used.

Also, OpManager’s custom dashboard lets you see all of your most important network metrics in one place, so you don’t have to switch between screens. This gives you full control and full visibility so that you can easily fix any network problems.

One of the best things about this product is that it comes with network monitor device templates that are already set up. These have monitoring parameters and time intervals that have already been set for certain types of devices. The product’s essential edition costs $595 and can be used on up to 25 devices.

4. Site24x7 Network Monitoring 

The Site24x7 monitoring agent doesn’t put your server’s security at risk in any way. The Site24x7 server monitoring agent only uses a one-way HTTPS connection, which works well with firewalls and usually doesn’t require you to open any new ports to the outside.

Key features:

• Auto-discovery for a network device inventory that is always up to date
• Automatic mapping of a network’s topology
• Includes monitoring of the internet’s performance for things like VPNs
• Storage clusters have their monitoring routines.
• Keeps an eye on the boundary and edge services like load balancers

The platform lets users get information about uptime, the performance of web applications, internet services, and private networks. Site24x7’s best features include monitoring website performance, web page speed (browser), DNS servers, website availability, website defacement monitoring, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) speed, Representational State Transfer (REST) API, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates, and more.

Switches, routers, firewall appliances, power supplies, load balancers, wireless networks, cloud services, and WAN connections are all monitored by Site24x7. It’s not a traffic monitor for the bandwidth. The monitor focuses on hardware that is hooked up. When you look at the Site24x7 package as a whole, you can see that the system also keeps an eye on servers and endpoints. It also keeps track of how well applications work.

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used by the site Monitor to check the status of devices every minute. If these answers show that there have been changes to the network infrastructure, the inventory and topology map are updated. The network monitoring service that comes with this package starts by looking for devices that are connected to the network. IT writes down what it finds in a network inventory and makes a topology map of the network.

5. Datadog Network Monitoring

Datadog Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) uses a unique, tag-based method to track the performance of on-premise and cloud-based networks. This lets you break down network traffic between hosts, containers, services, or any other tag in Datadog.

Key features:

• With Datadog Network Performance Monitoring (NPM), you can see more than ever before.
• It shows how network traffic moves between hosts, containers, and even more abstract ideas like services.
• It matches data about network traffic with relevant application traces, host metrics, and so on.
• Shows the flow of traffic visually on an interactive map to help find traffic jams and their effects.

You can set your own thresholds to get alerts about whatever you want. The alerting system is also available in the Network Performance Monitor, so when bottlenecks start to form, the traffic limits will be brought to your attention.

Datadog is a great network and service monitoring service for IT shops that are in the middle size range. If you can get past the initial setup and agent-based architecture, it has a lot to offer, like a lot of integrations, dashboards, and flexible alerts.

You can set up an alert forwarding rule so that you can get notifications by email, SMS, PagerDuty message, or Slack message. This means that you can leave the two network monitoring systems to watch the network on their own, knowing that you will be notified if something needs a person’s attention.

Datadog Network Performance Monitoring gives you granular visibility into network flows across multiple clouds and lets you collect and track this data using any Datadog tag.

6. Checkmk

Since 2007, Checkmk has been a free, open-source project. Every day, more than 15 full-time developers work to make Checkmk better. The Checkmk Raw Edition, which is our open-source edition, has more than 90% of our code changes. Under the GPL v2 license, we’ve shared more than 500,000 lines of code. Checkmk is based on the idea of plug-ins, which makes it a very modular monitoring solution. The plug-ins let you add vendor- and technology-specific parts to the solution so you can keep an eye on it.

Key features:

• There are several ways to get live network topology maps.
• LANs and wireless networks both need to be watched.
• The ability to monitor more than one site
• Servers, applications, and networks are all kept an eye on.

The SNMP system is used by the monitor to talk to switches, routers, and firewalls. All of the devices on your network will already have SNMP agents installed, but you may need to turn on that function. Checkmk asks agents for updates on their status. Responses are put together to make real-time reports on network readiness and performance.

The dashboard gives network managers an overview of all activity and then gives them several ways to get reports on individual devices, both in real-time and over time. Bandwidth monitoring is also part of the Checkmk package. This shows you where device and cable capacity is not enough to keep up with demand.

This one is mostly used to test the solution to see if the Enterprise Standard edition is the best option. It has no limits on what it can do, and you can use it for 30 days. After 30 days, you can only have up to 25 hosts. If you don’t have more than 25 hosts, you can take as long as you want. You can go straight from the Free and Raw versions to the Enterprise Standard version.

7. Progress WhatsUp Gold

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used by Progress Software Corporation’s WhatsUp Gold to track how well networks are running. On each switch and router, SNMP agents make a status report and keep it up to date, waiting for an SNMP manager to ask for it. Windows Server is used to install WhatsUp Gold. There are different pricing plans for this software so that it can work with your network and your budget.

Key features:

• Includes real-time data on how network devices are doing
• Makes charts and graphs of time-series data on the recent history of the device
• Shows a summary of the network, giving an overall status at a glance
• Support capacity planning with a list of the most popular sites and an analysis of trends
• Covers both LANs and wireless networks.

Each device agent answers the request, and then WhatsUp Gold puts together all of the answers. This mechanism tells the monitoring system exactly what devices are out there and which other devices each one is connected to.

Early on, WhatsUp Gold had a reputation for having simple metrics for IT professionals, but after reviewing it, we found that the platform has grown a lot and now has some of the best monitoring tools we saw in this roundup.

WhatsUp Gold software will automatically find cloud-based resources and show them on the same interactive map that shows your on-premises network. Not only can you now see and change them like any other device, but you can also see your whole networked infrastructure from end to end, which makes troubleshooting faster.

WhatsUp Gold has an interactive map of the network that shows how everything fits together. Its mapping interface is easy to use and offers filters and overlays to help you see your wireless networks, virtual environments, cloud resources, network dependencies, or interface usage.

Conclusion

Monitoring a network should be done proactively, which will help find problems early on. It can keep things from breaking down or going down. Out of all our top best tools is SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor for its ease of use and many admin-focused features.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a network software package from an innovative company that makes Enterprise IT Management Software. It offers high-end features of large network management frameworks at prices that are affordable for businesses all over the world. It is a reliable software that is ready for business use and doesn’t require consulting.