IP SLA Monitor
Measure and Improve Network Performance Using PRTG’s IP SLA Monitor
Most Cisco devices that run the company's IOS software include support for IP SLA (IP Service Level Agreements), which can help Cisco customers to measure network performance, monitor IP services, and troubleshoot their networks. An IP SLA monitor such as PRTG Network Monitor reads the IP SLA data from Cisco devices, triggers alarms if certain thresholds are being crossed, visualizes the data in graphs and tables, compares the readings to historic data, etc. It also helps you to determine whether your network is ready for Voice-over-IP, and to control the quality of your VoIP connections.
In contrast to most other net monitoring tools, the IP SLA monitor is included in all PRTG licenses at no extra cost - even in the freeware edition! The freeware with 10 sensors can be downloaded here.
The IP SLA monitor measures factors such as packet loss, packet delay, MOS, round trip time between two Cisco routers or between a server and a router. If your routers (Cisco or other makes) do not support IP SLA, PRTG offers a great alternative: the QoS sensor, which is included in all licenses of PRTG, measures similar factors between two remote probes or a remote probe and the server running PRTG. This allows you to check service level agreements and measure network performance in a very similar fashion.
More Than an IP SLA Monitor
However, PRTG is more than an IP SLA Monitor. The bandwidth and server monitoring software is ideal for network traffic and usage monitoring, can be used as a reliable and advanced PING tester that monitors server availability and tracks network performance. The network audit tools by Paessler are often referred to as MRTG for Windows. However, PRTG offers much more than the SNMP client MRTG: The PRTG software is a LAN traffic monitor which also supports WMI and acquires bandwidth usage data using SNMP, packet sniffing (IP sniffer freeware), and NetFlow. Moreover, it offers more than 115 different sensor types to cater for all needs: from VMware to SQL server monitoring, from Exchange 2007 to free disk space...