Free Network Monitoring and Analysis Tool for System Admin

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If you have landed on this page, it’s most likely because you’re thinking of getting a new network monitoring tool. Fortunately, there are several quality tools, both commercial and open source, available in the online market. We know how much administrator love free tools, that’s why we’ve complied a list of free Network Monitoring and Analysis Software that will prove their worth day in and day out in networks of any size.

 

What are the Benefits Network Monitoring Tool?

• Reduce time and cost
• Detect malicious traffic
• Collect valuable historical data
• Optimize both process and resources

From server monitoring to trending, graphing, and even switch and router configuration backups, these tools will handle all.

29. The Dude

 

The Dude automatically scans all devices within specified subnets, draws and layout a map of your network, monitors services of your devices and alerts you when a problem occurs. It includes SVG icons for devices and supports custom icons and backgrounds.

This easy-to-use tool allows you to monitor individual links and direct access to remote control tools for device management. Currently, it supports ICMP, SNMP, DNS and TCP protocols.

28. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

As the name suggests, the tool can be used to search WiFi networks around you, manage and troubleshoot connections, verify WiFi coverage, locate devices and detect rogue access points. It is designed to provide real time monitoring of wireless network status, and ensure you are getting the highest performance available from wireless networks.

Xirrus WiFi Inspector comes with built-in connection, quality and speed tests. It operates on Mac OS X and Windows platform and supports the latest WiFi standards, including 802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2 technology.

27. Ntop

Ntop (or Ntopng) shows network usage, similar to what Unix command does. It is based on libpcap and has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every platform. It even incorporates a lightweight Lua API framework that can be used to support extensions via scripting languages.

Ntop stores host data in RRD files for persistent data collection. Users can use a web browser to navigate ntop traffic information and get a dump of the network status. There is an impressive array of network utilization graphs, trends, and live map, along with usable add-ons like Netflow and sFlow monitors.

26. Op5 Monitor

Op5 monitors multiple platform, including cloud systems and virtual environment. It makes easy to create business views and measure all parts of crucial services. The interface and reports are understandable across departments and functions, bridging the gap between IT operations and other departments.

Op5 Monitor has its root in the open source world, and has capabilities to provide detailed and instant insight into your IT infrastructure with alerting and notifications on applications, servers and networks.

25. Angry IP Scanner

It’s a cross platform and lightweight tool that scans IP addresses in any range as well as any their ports. It tool pings each IP address to check it is alive, then optionally it is resolving the hostname, MAC address and ports. The amount of collected data about each host can be extended with plugins.

In order to increase the scanning speed, it uses multithreaded approach – a separate scanning thread is created for each scanned IP address. You can save the scanned results to TXT, CSV, XML or IP-Port list files.

24. PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG monitors all systems, applications and devices using SNMP, WMI, SSH, flows and packet sniffing. It offers more than 170 sensors types for application monitoring, virtual server monitoring, SLA and QoS monitoring. However, the freeware version is limited to 10 sensors.

The flexible alerting feature includes 9 different notification methods, status alerts, threshold alerts, limit alert and conditional alerts, while in-depth reporting feature has the ability to generate reports in HTML or PDF formats on specific/pre-defined schedule, for example top 200 ping times.

23. NeDi

NeDi helps you stay ahead of increasing traffic, drops, errors replaced modules or failed links. It’s a LAMP application that tells the MAC address and ARP tables on network switches, cataloging every device it discovers in a local database.

NeDi gathers as much information as possible from every network device it encounters, pulling serial numbers, softwares and firmware versions, module configurations, and so forth. You can also flag MAC addresses of devices that are stolen or missing. Net will let you know if they appear on the network again.

22. WirelessNetView

WirelessNetView runs in the background and monitors wireless network activity around you. For each detected network, it will display SSID, average signal quality, last signal quality, authentication algorithm, MAC address, detection counter, channel number, channel frequency, RSSI and more.

21. NetSpot

NetSpot is a WiFi analyzer which works over any 802.11 network. It’s a perfect tool to visualize, manage, troubleshoot, audit, plan and deploy your wireless networks.

NetSpot helps network security specialists in locating and eliminating rogue access points, avoiding cross channel interference, detecting unauthorized workstations and getting rid of false-positive intrusion alerts. You can also check the security settings, Wifi signal strength and non-broadcasting SSIDs.

25 Free Network Monitoring and Analysis Tool