Network Monitoring

MegaPing brings the convenience of Windows to the use of host monitor, finger, name lookup, network time synchronizer, ping, traceroute, and whois utilities. It also includes a comprehensive Security Scanner, Port scanner (TCP and UDP ports), IP scanner, NetBIOS scanner and a Share Scanner. The program provides an overview of important system information, from IP routing information to per protocol statistics. It also provides information about the processes running on your computer, including summary and detailed information on threads, memory usage, loaded modules, and a number of other parameters. Megaping supports monitoring of multiple remote computers simultaneously as well as processing any number of ping, traceroute, general DNS, DNS AFXR (Transfer zone of authority), finger, and whois requests simultaneously. The built in port scanner can rapidly scan multiple or individual machines for open TCP ports and provides real-time information about open ports and connections with detailed description. Additional features include real-time protocol statistics, detailed interface information, real-time IP routing information, TCP protocol information and statistics and more.

XArp is a network security application that employs advanced ARP attack detection filters to analyze network packets and detect potential ARP attacks. Unlike most firewalls, XArp works in level 2 of the ISO-OSI stack which enables it to detect IP and MAC address spoofing attempts. An internal database keeps track of valid IPs and MAC addresses which, in combination with static inspection techniques, allow the program to make an informed decision about the validity of the package. XArp offers two different interface modes designed for normal users, as well as administrators. If a potential threat is detected, the program alerts you via pop-up message on your desktop.

NetGong is a network monitoring tool that enables you to keep an eye of servers and network devices and be alerted when problems arise. It supports notifications by sound, pop-up dialog, email and file execution. NetGong can monitor devices by ping or connect to a specific port via TCP/UDP. Overall a an easy-to-use monitor with mostly basic features - suitable for home users.

Alchemy Eye is a network and system management tool that continuously monitors server availability and performance. In the event of network errors, Alchemy Eye can alert the network administrator by cell phone or pager before problems get seriously out of hand. Alchemy Eye offers support for a variety of checks, including NT Event Log, SQL database, Disk space, file existence and a lot more. Of course it can also check the standard HTTP and Ping ports. Actions taken upon server failure also include the optional execution of custom VB scripts or programs, computer restarts and even database queries. The program supports scheduled maintenance, so you won`t be alerted if the outage was scheduled.

Global Network Inventory is a software and hardware inventory system that can be used as an audit scanner in an agent-free and zero deployment environments. It can audit remote workstations and network appliances, including network printers, hubs and other devices. The program requires only administrative access rights if used for on-demand auditing, and it can also be deployed as an agent to perform regular audits initiated through the domain login script. You can scan computers by IP range or domain or based on a host file and fully customize the items to be audited. The available auditing options include various system information groups, installed software, services, user lists, shares, startup programs and much more. Global Network Inventory can export the scan results to HTML, XML, Microsoft Excel, or text formats, and also send reports via email. The price includes a license for up to 25 IP addresses, extra licenses to cover additional addresses can be purchased at any time if required.

Internet Server Monitor enables network administrators to monitor web servers and services for availability, and get notified when problems occur. The program offers alerts via email, message box, sound, Syslog or EvenLog entry, as well as SMS (ClickaTel). Internet Server Monitor can run as Windows Service and supports HTTP, FTP, SMTP, Ping, POP3, TCP and SQL Server monitors, each with individual configuration options. You can schedule the monitors to run every X minutes, or daily, weekly or monthly intervals. Monitors can be organized into groups and you can review the history for each monitored device.

Advanced Host Monitor is a system management tool that can monitor hundreds or thousands of servers or network devices using 60 different test methods, including ping, retrieve an URL, check the available disk space, check integrity of your files and web site, test your SQL server, and more. If a device does not respond, it can take a pre-defined action that includes sound warning, email notification, pager or mobile phone notification, execute external programs, remote shutdown/reboot and more. In addition program can also generate a log file that can be configured to suit your needs. Additional features include Log Analyzer to illustrate information for each tested host and collect statistical information, as well as a HML Manager, Web Service, Telnet Service, Remote Monitoring Agents (for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris) and other utilities. Advanced Host Monitor is also available as Lite($99), Standard ($175) or Professional ($350) edition.

Simple Server Monitor allows you to monitor servers and services from your desktop and monitor performance statistics with the help of real-time graphs. It supports common services such as Ping, FTP, HTTP (GET, HEAD, POST), SMTP, IMAP, POP, as well as user defined ports and SSL/TLS connections. If a monitored device becomes unreachable you can be notified via email message, pop-up alert or add/or add an entry to a log file or Event Log. As the name properly implies, this is a simple monitoring tool that provides an easy-to-use and attractive interface with graphs, but lacks the advanced features and alert options of more sophisticated (and higher priced) products. Great for webmasters or site administrators that want to keep an eye on their servers.

Text Log Monitor 2008 enables you to monitor the content of text files on the network and perform automated actions such as email alerts, archiving, reports and more. The program supports delimited and non-delimited text log files with dynamic file names, and can monitor entire directories of files for new log entries. Text Log Monitor offers flexible filtering options to find critical entries based on keywords or regular expressions. Other features include log archiving (to a central SQL Server or MySQL database or to CSV, HTML, TXT or XML files), trigger actions, scheduled reports and more.

NetVizor is a powerful network surveillance tool, that allows you to monitor your entire network from one centralized location. It enables you to track workstations and individual users that may use multiple PCs on a network. NetVizor combines real-time remote surveillance, administration, and individual user monitoring and can record keystrokes, web/email activity, application activity, documents viewed, screenshots and much more. All logs are store on the central server and a detailed report can be viewed from a browser interface.

LogMeister is a universal log reader with customizable monitoring and notification features. It allows you to monitor text logs, Windows EventLogs (local and remote), Windows Firewall logs, as well as RSS Feeds and web site changes. You can apply multiple filters to limit logging to specific entries, set alerts to be notified by popup or email message and more. The interface maintains all tracked logs in an easy-to read display, and further allows you to export selected logs to formatted HTML reports, CSV or XML. The program can harvests log data from computers across your network without the need for additional installations (access privileges required). LogMeister is very flexible and can be used for many purposes, including monitoring of web server log files for specific entries, keyword alerts for monitored RSS feeds, error management across networks, aggregating of monitored log entries and more.

Intellipool Network Monitor is an easy to use, browser based network monitor that can help you to monitor a variety of different protocols and services on LAN or internet machines. It runs as a service and consumes minimal system resources. The modern interface is web based and all you need is a device with a web browser to control Intellipool Network Monitor from the SSL protected web interface. Sentry is structured into actions, objects and agents as well as configurable operators and groups. Monitoring agents include RDP 5.0(Windows Terminal Server), ICA (Citrix Metaframe 1.7-1.8), ODBC, LDAP, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, DNS, TFTP, IMAP4 TCP Port scan (Firewall test), SSH2, Ping, CPU load, disk space and many others. The program is able to log errors and informational messages to XML file, Syslog, Windows Eventlog or an ODBC database as well as graphical display graphs. Notification options include SMS, NotePage, PageGate and Email. Intellipool Network Monitor is easy to setup and comes with a handy AutoScan feature that can scan the device to check which monitoring options are available, so you can quickly add a variety of device specific checks.

Nsauditor Network Security Auditor is a complete networking utilities package that includes a wide range of tools for network auditing, scanning, monitoring and more. You can discover network services and check them for vulnerabilities, list all TCP and UDP endpoints with their associated process, discover NetBios names, audit MS SQL servers, scan for common Adware traces and more. The program also includes real-time network packet filtering and analyzing, web proxy scanning, password auditing, IP address lookup and more than 35 network tools for scanning, sniffing, enumerating and gaining access to machines, DNS and WHOIS lookups, e-mail validation, HTTP traffic generator and intrusion detection based on security events log. Reports can be generated in HTML and XML format. Overall, this is a very complete package for a surprisingly low price.

WebWatchBot is a monitoring and analysis software for web sites and IP devices including Ping, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, FTP, Port, and DNS checks. It provides in-depth monitoring and alerting functionality as well as tools to analyze and visualize historical data with real-time charting and graphs. Additional features include an option to run as a Windows Service, customizable 3D charts with print support, SQL database storage, and more.

NetPalpus is an easy-to-use network management tool, that can discover, organize and monitor all devices on your network. It can monitor the device status, as well as availability of specific services (http, smtp, ftp, mssql etc.) and alert you via sound or email when a device becomes unavailable. The network devices are automatically organized by subnet and service type, and you can also create custom groups to manage them based on your own criteria. NetPalpus lacks advanced monitoring and alerting features, but for basic network monitoring it offers good features at a low price.

ShareAlarmPro enables you to monitor network shares and be alerted when files are added, changed or removed or when share policies are changed. Alerts can be sent via tray icon, sound or email message. The program also logs all network session and file changes, allowing you to review anything that happened on your PC. The session viewer provides an overview of all currently active sessions with the option to terminate a session, block users or send a message to the user. ShareAlarmPro can also monitor the Windows Event Log and alerts you of certain events like failed logins, user log-offs, expired password and more. Other features include LAN browsing, folder monitoring, and more.

IPSentry is a centralized network monitoring software package that can continuously monitor an unlimited number of Internet and Intranet servers, routers and other devices. If a problem is detected, the software can alert you via email, SMS, X10 control mode, Syslog message and other options. The program can monitor TCP/IP ports, drive space usage and Services, with additional monitoring options available via add-ins. The optional add-ins are available for monitoring of modems, event logs, file contents, DNS, ODBC database connection and more (add-ins are licensed separately and not included in the base price). Other features include statistical reports and graphs, monitoring schedules and downtime overrides, support for dependency based monitoring and more. The features included with the base price are sufficient for standard monitoring of TCP/IP devices and by purchasing optional add-ons, you can easily extend the monitoring features to suit your network environment.

sMonitor allows you to verify network connectivity of TCP/IP hosts on the Internet and LAN. It supports periodic checks of TCP and UDP ports and comes pre-configured for the most common services. If it detects an outage, you can be notified via sound alert or email message, and can optionally launch a an application or execute a script on failure and/or status change. Advanced users can use these options to perform Telnet actions on the machine. sMonitor comes with a very plain and simple interface and does not look like much, however it offers quit a few features under the gray hood, that include an option to run as NT service, HTML status page that can be automatically uploaded via FTP, as well as custom intervals based on time of day. Additional features include logging, customizable check sequences, and unlimted check entries.

ServersCheck Monitoring is a tool for monitoring, reporting and alerting on network and systems availability. It can monitor up to 50 devices, using any TCP Port (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NNTP, POP3, SMTP, VNC, DNS, etc.) and also perform database checks (ODBC, Oracle, MySQL), trap SNMP values (disk space, free memory, CPU usage etc.), verify content served from a web server and check NT services and process availability. In addition to regular network devices, the program can also can monitor environmental devices like temperature, humidity, flooding. If problems are detected, ServersCheck will alert you via SMS, pager, e-mail, network message, HTTP post or MSN message. With the optional Alert IVR module you can even call the server using any phone to acknowledge received alerts and let other users know that you are working on the problem. ServersCheck Monitoring Software runs as a local service and is administrated via a browser based interface. Additional features include alerts and graph output for long-term statistics tracking.

IE HTTP Analyzer is an add-in for Internet Explorer, that allows you to capture HTTP/HTTPS traffic in real-time. It displays a wide range of information, including Header, Content, Cookies, Query Strings, Post data, redirection URLs and more. It also provides cache information and session clearing, as well as HTTP status code information and several filtering options. A useful developer tool for performance analysis, debugging and diagnostics. IE HTTP Analyzer integrates into the lower part of your IE browser window and can be opened/closed from the IE toolbar.

CommView for WiFi is a special edition of CommView designed for capturing and analyzing network packets on wireless 802.11 a/b/g networks. It gathers information from the wireless adapter and decodes the analyzed data. In addition, it lets you see the list of network connections and vital IP statistics and examine individual packets. Packets can be decrypted utilizing user-defined WEP keys and are decoded down to the lowest layer, with full analysis of the most widespread protocols. The captured packets can be saved to log files for future analysis. CommView provides several filter options, that allow to drop unnecessary packets and limit capture to essential information. Additional features include configurable alarms, pie chart statistics, import/export, packet search and full decoding of most protocols. CommView for WiFi requires you to replace your wireless network card driver - the monitoring computer will be in a passive mode and not be able to connect to the network, other than for packet monitoring. It should be installed on a dedicated machine or secondary network card.

Network Eagle is a network monitoring program, that supports Ping checks, HTTP checks, Database checks (with SQL query verification), disk space checks and more. It can also notify you of Eventlog entries and check NT services/processes for their status. Advanced users can write their own script checks using JS and VBS or any other script provider like ActivePerl or Active Python installed on your system. In case any check returns an error, Network Eagle provides several alert options, including email, Eventlog, sound notification, custom scripts and more. It also notifies with a popup from the system tray and keeps long term statistics for failures, overall downtime per server and more.

Servers Alive is a feature rich network monitor. It can monitor any WinSock service (TCP:FTP, HTTP, POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, DNS,... and UDP:Radius and Quake II etc.), ping a host/machine, check if an NT Service is running (which can be restarted by Servers Alive), check if an NT process is running, monitor the available disk space on a remote machine, check for the correct content of a webpage, check a MS SQL server, check an Oracle database and so on. The program offers a variety of notification options including SMS, email, pager and even ICQ or MSN Messenger notifications. It comes with an optional built-in web server to serve a status page, ftp upload, escalation schemes and much much more. Servers Alive can run as an NT service.

NBT Host Monitor is a network ping monitor that can monitor dozens or thousands of Windows computer across the network. You can enter one or more IP ranges and the program will retrieve host information along with the MAC address, work group, NIC vendor and other details. If a host becomes unavailable, the program can notify you by email, pop-up dialog, net message, file execution or syslog message. Other features include customizable error messages and logging.

SolarWinds ipMonitor provides availability monitoring for all your applications, servers, and network devices. It comes complete with a built-in web server and database to keep track of monitoring results. The program can quickly discover IP-based network devices and automatically recommend monitoring settings for each device, without the need for manual configuration. You can configure a variety of checks, including monitoring of Active Directory, DNS, Microsoft Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, SMTP, and more. SolarWinds ipMonitor is managed via a modern browser interface, that is password protected and can be accessed from anywhere on the network. Other features include support for SNMP and WMI, end-user experience monitoring, customizable reports, alerts (email, SMS, Net send etc.) and more.

Axence NetTools Professional is a set of essential networking tools that includes network monitoring, port scanner, NetStat, TCP/IP Workshop, graphical ping, Traceroute, Bandwidth measuring, SNMP browser and more. You can monitor ping responses from multiple devices or websites and be alerted via email, sound or message dialog when a server becomes unavailable. The TCP/IP Workshop allows you to troubleshoot TCP/IP problems by establishing a manual TCP connection with a host. Other features include statistical history graphs and export to HTML, XML and CSV.

VisualPulse Web Edition is a network and server monitor that provides a web based report interface for Ping, HTTP, SNMP, and TCP performance. It can alert you by email or SNMP trap if any of the monitored devices become unavailable. The web interface is rather primitive and only offers very basic functionalities and statistics tables, however it does include a real-time graph display, as well as a statistical graph with customizable time spans. We found VisualPulse Web Edition to be lacking in many aspects, ranging from lack of alert options and limited monitoring options to a poor interface and configuration. The program can run as a Windows service, however this requires manual service install/uninstall via DOS. The price does not include any future updates (can be purchased separately).

SoftPerfect Network Protocol Analyzer (formerly Softperfect Network Sniffer) is a protocol analyzer for analyzing, debugging, maintaining and monitoring local network and Internet connections. It captures and analyzes the data passing through your network connection, and represents it in a readable form. The program completely decodes all the major protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, as well as top-level protocols including HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP,FTP and others. The program includes detailed filter options that allow you to limit the capture based on IP address, port, data content and more. The program also includes a packet builder, which allows advanced users to assemble and send network packets, from scratch or based on captured data.

Radar Website Monitor allows you to monitor up to 15 Internet sites, including HTTP, FTP and mail servers. If one of the monitored items causes a problem, you can be notified via email message, tray popup or custom command line action. The program supports GET, POST and HEADER methods, and can also look for specific keywords, that should be present in the HTML code. A statistical graph allows you to view performance for the last few minutes at a glance, and text statistics provide long term performance data. The trial version is limited to 300 checks per session.