If you’re looking for a robust yet affordable network monitoring tool offering a greater degree of automation and insight and a lesser degree of required manual input than an open-source solution, SolarWinds ® ipMonitor ® may be a good option for you. Additionally, immediate custom fixes may not be available unless you spend time developing and maintaining them yourself. The second consideration is security, which may become an issue, depending on the tool you select and your enterprise’s security guidelines. Missing features may have to be built with the help of community support or an in-house IT team. Open-source monitoring solutions often require a significant investment in time and resources. As the saying goes, “Open-source is only free if your time is worthless.” Open-source choices are good and can even match commercial tools, but you should know that using open-source monitoring requires a high level of involvement with the tool, which may not perfectly suit your needs. Below, we will share some of our favorites with you. Because many organizations need their network to be up and functioning to generate revenue, having the right set of tools to monitor and manage the one you so lovingly created is critical.īut how do you find the best network monitoring tools when there are hundreds of commercial products, freeware tools, and open-source software to choose from? While the debate about free versus commercial goes on, there are tried and tested, free network monitoring tools that many network admins swear by. To build a network, you start with an architecture, draw the design, and analyze and choose the hardware that meets your requirements.

But now that time has passed, the landscape has changed, and we think it’s worthwhile to review those old choices and possibly add a few new ones.

And honestly, those reviews have stood the test of time. Way back in 2015, we reviewed the must-have top free networking tools.

Bandwidth monitoring software