Paessler Blog
Archive for "2008"
2008-Dec-18
"Cannot Assign Requested Address (#10049)" Errors in Webserver Stress Tool under Vista
Recently some users of our product Webserver Stress Tool found out that they could not perform any load tests anymore - but it had worked fine on their Vista computers before.2008-Nov-11
Packet Sniffing Debug Tool Updated
Our Card Packet Counter is a small tool that shows live stats and a short term statistical history about the network data packets and streams passing a local network card. Using the Packet Sniffing Engine of PRTG Network Monitor it looks at all network packets that pass a specific network card. It was mainly developed to debug technical issues between PCs and the packet sniffing engine which is built into PRTG Network Monitor. But it is also a very useful tool for other network problem finding situations - and it's free.2008-Nov- 4
Using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to Run a Remote Probe for PRTG Network Monitor
Cloud computing pioneer Amazon Web Services recently announced support for hosting of Windows based servers on its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. This new offering can now easily be used to create a cheap Remote Probe server for your own installation of PRTG Network Monitor! To extended our own global network of probes (we use it as a demo website for visitors interested in PRTG and as a test platform for PRTG as well) we created a new remote probe running on EC2 in less than 30 minutes. Here are the steps we took:
2008-Oct-16
Monitoring your Internet Bandwidth Usage with a LinkSys RVS 4000 Router and PRTG Network Monitor
Many users of the freeware of PRTG Network Monitor use the software to simply monitor their Internet router and to find out how much bandwidth they consume in a month. The Linksys RVS 4000 is a good and common example and we will look at its details for this blog post. Many other Internet access routers will show quite similar behaviour. If you let PRTG's auto-discovery scan the router's IP you will get the following sensors:2008-Oct- 9
How We Created a Globally Distributed Monitoring System with PRTG for Less Than US$220/Month
As a testbed and demonstration website for the "Remote Probe" feature of our monitoring software PRTG Network Monitor (and out of technical curiosity) we have set up a network of monitoring stations around the globe based on PRTG. To keep our costs low we have used virtual server offerings from grid hosting or VPS hosting companies for our remote probe installations. Virtual servers are much cheaper than dedicated offerings but provide only limited resources of course. In order to act as a remote probe for PRTG that only sends out a few monitoring requests into the Internet every few seconds a VPS is perfectly enough - in all cases we purchased the smallest Windows VPS offering available and saw decent results. PRTG's remote probes usually require little CPU cycles. We have to keep in mind that - due to bottlenecks caused by other VPSs on the same hosting system that may use a lot of CPU or bandwidth - the measured values will show a lot more jitter than they would on a dedicated system. For a long term perspective these fluctuations do not really matter. And they also do not matter for pure availability monitoring (even if the probe system has little CPU power, it will still find out whether a webserver can be reached or not). As a result we now have a network of 5 monitoring stations around the globe that are connected to one core instance of PRTG Network Monitor.2008-Oct- 1
Monitoring System Parameters of VMware ESX Servers Hosts and Virtual Machines
With version 7.0.9 we are introducing specialized sensors for monitoring of VMware ESX servers. These sensors talk directly to the SOAP interface of ESX servers in order to monitor the system health of the host machine as well as the system health of each individual virtual machine.2008-Sep- 5
The Browser War is Back: Choosing the Best Web Browser for PRTG Network Monitor
Since Google have launched their new browser "Chrome" a few days ago development in the world of Web browsers is becoming quite interesting. The new contender Chrome has already created a lot of buzz and includes a number of innovative features that will raise the innovation pressure for the other players. We wanted to know which one of the four most used browsers is the best for accessing PRTG Network Monitor's web interface which offers an ajaxified web interface experience.2008-Aug-25
The return of the TEXTLIST interface
With the latest beta version of PRTG Network Monitor 7.0.8 we have re-implemented the so-called "TEXTLIST" interface which makes access to the current monitoring status of all your sensors easy.2008-Aug-20
How can I monitor my available bandwidth 24/7?
We receive questions like this every few days. User of our monitoring products want to know if their ISP or hosting service is actually providing them with the available bandwidth that they are paying for. But measuring the actually available bandwidth is almost impossible. Let me explain this:2008-Aug-19
Introducing the PRTG Network Monitor API
Starting with Version 7.0.8 PRTG Network Monitor (currently in public beta testing) includes a web-based API that enables external programs to have access information from the monitoring database and to manipulate the object database of PRTG. The API is HTTP based and uses a set of URLs to access the data.
2008-Aug-15
PRTG goes mobile: Introducing the iPhone-optimized Interface
With version 7.0.8 (currently in beta) we have added a new user interface that is optimized for the Apple iPhone. This feature enables the user to quickly check the status of his servers and sensors on the road.
2008-Jul-22
New version 7.0.6 of PRTG Network Monitor
We have uploaded a new version of PRTG 7. This version includes new features, usability improvements and a number of bugfixes. Besides a number of bugfixes and changes we have added the following new features:2008-Jun-30
Official Release of PRTG Network Monitor V7.0
Today we have officially released PRTG Network Monitor Version 7. This new version marks a major step in the development of Paessler's monitoring products.2008-Jun- 2
Introduction to PRTG 7 for IPCheck 5 users - What's new? What's different?
A new knowledge base article summarizes the differences between PRTG Network Monitor 7 and its part-predecessor IPCheck 5 - from the perspective of an IPCheck Server Monitor 5 user.2008-May-27
Release Candidate 1 of our new flagship product PRTG 7 is available for download
Today we have uploaded the first Release Candidate of our new monitoring tool PRTG Network Monitor.2008-May-23
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 6: Why we created the PRTG 7 user interface to be a little.... different
This another posting of my series of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test. We began the development process of PRTG 7 in 2006. The first step was to make a list of features that we (and our customers) wanted to have in the software additionally to all the functionalities of PRTG 6 and IPCheck 5. We listened to feedback from our users and one major task was to create a new software that was able to monitor 10-50 times as many sensors as the old programs and - as a consequence - we also needed a new user interface to enable the users to handle hundreds and thousands of sensors with ease.2008-May-14
Listening to Customer Requests. That's what we've done - for PRTG 7.
I do understand that - being used to PRTG 6 - looking at PRTG 7 may let you frown at the first glance. And yes, maybe the new software isn't the kind of breakthrough user interface that we have tried to create for each and every user. There may be some areas where PRTG 6 still is quicker solution. But if you stay with PRTG 6 you will miss so much! Let me take you on a short guided tour trip so you can see why we did make many substantial changes to the software, why we created new concepts and what unbelievable power is now built into PRTG 7!2008-May- 9
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 5: The "Inheritance" Concept
This another posting of my series of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test.
The hierarchical list of sensors is not only used to group sensors to organize them, there is also an important aspect involved that we call "Inheritance".2008-May- 8
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 4: Object Hierarchy - Probes, Groups, Devices, Sensors, Channels
This another posting of my series of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test.
In PRTG Network Monitor the actual monitoring is performed by "Sensors". One of these sensors always monitors one single aspect of a network device, e.g.2008-May- 7
Introduction to PRTG 7 for PRTG 6 users - What's new? What's different?
Today we have published a new knowledgebase article that summarizes the differences between PRTG Network Monitor 7 and its predecessor PRTG Traffic Grapher 6 - from the perspective of a PRTG 6 user. The new version 7 of PRTG brings together the functionalities of PRTG 6 and IPCheck 5 into one concise network monitoring application and adds a number of new features, especially some functions to ease and automate management for larger networks.2008-May- 6
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 3: User Interface Navigation
Here is another posting of my series of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test.
The main layout of PRTG Network Monitor's web-based user interface consists of the Global Status Bar at the top, the Header Area with the main menu and quick-search box below it and finally the main page content.2008-May- 5
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 2: System Architecture
This blog post continues my series of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test. PRTG Network Monitor System Architecture PRTG Network Monitor consists of three main parts:2008-May- 2
Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 1: Product Overview
Over the next few weeks I will publish a number of introductory blog posts about our new software "PRTG Network Monitor 7" which is currently undergoing a public beta test.
Let's begin with a short overview of what PRTG 7 is:
2008-Apr-15
The first Public Beta of PRTG Network Monitor V7 is available
After so many months of busy development work everybody at Paessler AG is proud to present the first publicly available beta version of PRTG Network Monitor 7, our new flagship monitoring product! The new version 7 of PRTG brings together the functionalities of PRTG 6 and IPCheck 5 into one concise network monitoring application and adds a number of new features, especially some functions to ease and automate management for larger networks.2008-Feb- 1
AMD's "Cool'n'Quiet" and Intel's "SpeedStep" can cause incorrect measurements for PRTG and IPCheck
2008-Jan-24
On some systems disabling DEP can solve problems running PRTG on 64-bit Windows
We recently had a customer who after having experienced multiple crashes while running PRTG under Windows Vista 64-Bit updated to version 6.2.0.907 only to notice that PRTG did not even start up properly but was crashing while in the process. Basically, his experience was that upon starting PRTG the "Loading..." screen would show up for a couple of seconds and the program would crash almost immediately, triggering the typical "solution search" window well known to Vista users.2008-Jan- 8
Installation of PRTG Traffic Grapher on Ubuntu Linux
You do not need a Windows based computer (and a Windows license) to use most of PRTG's features. You can also run PRTG Traffic Grapher 6.x on Linux. Using the "Wine Library" (which emulates Windows system calls) you can run PRTG like most other Windows apps on Linux systems. Of course some hardware/driver-based features like Packet Sniffing do not work. For this tutorial the following steps will- create a virtual machine in VMWare Workstation 6,
- install Ubuntu 7.10 onto the virtual machine,
- install Wine 0.9.52 onto Ubuntu and
- install PRTG 6.x onto Ubuntu/Wine