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Good (free) network monitoring software?

M

Maverick2002

Diamond Member
Hi,

I'm looking for some soft of network monitoring software so I can check and see what's going on in our office. The last IT guy had a falling out with the company and there are still some ties that need to be cut. I'm the only IT person, so I walked into a bit of a mess. One thing that's happening daily is a major network slowdown, which makes me think there's some sort of data dump happening across the network and I want to check and see if anything fishy is going on.

What kind of network traffic monitoring software would you recommend? I don't have any experience in this field. This popped up doing a google search: http://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-monitoring-management-software/

TIA
 
John Connor said:
Does one of these network monitoring software's show what page people are browsing?
Click to expand...

Doesn't look like it. These are network monitors and not application monitors. Ntop has a netflowlite module but you would need a netflow device to make use of it.
 
Network Monitor is a general word almost as saying: "I need Food".

You have to explain what exactly you want to monitor in a Technical term rather than LOL Social term: "what's going on in our office".

The capacity to "Monitor" most Network's variables depends on the Topology of the Network and its hardware.

P.S., Regretfully many times the answers/suggestions in Online forums are based on "Magic Thinking" under which the answer member assume that every one in the world have a duplicate of his Network and use it for the same purpose.



😎
 
Last edited:
Maverick2002 said:
Hi,

I'm looking for some soft of network monitoring software so I can check and see what's going on in our office. The last IT guy had a falling out with the company and there are still some ties that need to be cut. I'm the only IT person, so I walked into a bit of a mess. One thing that's happening daily is a major network slowdown, which makes me think there's some sort of data dump happening across the network and I want to check and see if anything fishy is going on.

What kind of network traffic monitoring software would you recommend? I don't have any experience in this field. This popped up doing a google search: http://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-monitoring-management-software/

TIA
Click to expand...

isolate that as best as you can and wireshark it I guess

SNMP tools like intermapper would allow you to see what switch uplinks are getting saturated to narrow down where the traffic is coming from
 
JackMDS said:
Network Monitor is a general word almost as saying: "I need Food".

You have to explain what exactly you want to monitor in a Technical term rather than LOL Social term: "what's going on in our office".

The capacity to "Monitor" most Network's variables depends on the Topology of the Network and its hardware.

P.S., Regretfully many times the answers/suggestions in Online forums are based on "Magic Thinking" under which the answer member assume that every one in the world have a duplicate of his Network and use it for the same purpose.



😎
Click to expand...

At certain points throughout the day the entire network slows down significantly (pinging google goes from 30ms to 1000ms+) for some time, and I'd like to figure out what the issue is, if that's possible with a network monitor. Does that help?
 
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ios..._products_genericcontent0900aecd805ff72b.html

I guess it depends on what you are pinging (Something on the web, Someting on another subnet or something on your subnet) though if these would help at all. You would want to collect netflow info from in and outbound interfaces on whatever devices support it.

Netflow collectors usually just receive the info similar to a syslog server, a netflow analyzer would make it into something easily readable.

What are you using for routing?
 
I use a combination of Observium to monitor SNMP information, Smokeping to monitor latency and jitter, and Rancid to archive and catalog configuration changes. They're all free and opensource.

In regards to your specific issue, it's likely that your upstream is becoming saturated. Depending on your hardware, it may or may not be possible for you to determine what is causing the saturation.
 
I use the tool called Anturis that is a cloud-based and it is not only network monitoring, but the whole IT monitoring tool. I stick to the point that such tool is even much better as you have more control over every guy in the company. At least I think so.
 
We searched a lot a and tried many of the mentioned tools. Finally we found CloudView NMS http://www.cloudviewnms.com . It can monitor/manage anything via standard protocols: SNMP, sysLog, TL1, services, applications. They provide network autodiscovery and inventory tool, maps. It is multi-user
with configurable profiles, accessible from any web browser remotely (including mobile devices) Alerts logging and forwarding via many protocols (including e-mail) . Can manage/monitor huge networks from simple PC and they do not charge per number of nodes/switching ports.
 
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