Network Traffic Monitoring Tools

Monitoring network traffic helps you to understand data flows in your network, optimize your network, and avoid bandwidth bottlenecks. The PRTG network traffic monitoring tools use SNMP, packet sniffing, and NetFlow to analyze and monitor all network traffic.

Network Traffic Visualization

Depending on your configurations and the chosen monitoring technology, PRTG Network Monitor shows network usage by port, IP address, protocol, or other parameters. This data is presented in easy to read graphs and tables. Another interesting method of network traffic visualization are PRTG's top lists, which show you which IP address uses most bandwidth, etc.

This way, the network traffic monitoring tools help you to monitor and manage resource usage in your network, to prevent bottlenecks, and to prioritize or limit network traffic. This is especially helpful if you are using VoIP or other streaming technologies, which are easily affected by network congestion: if PRTG, which can also be used as VoIP monitoring software, detects high packet loss rates or too much jitter, you will be notified. This enables you to limit network traffic caused by other applications and thus ensure good VoIP quality.

Thanks to the detailed data provided by the network traffic monitoring tools, you can make educated decisions on whether additional resources should be purchased. Moreover, it also enables you to check service level agreements.

PRTG Network Monitor

The PRTG network traffic monitor tools run on all Microsoft Windows versions from XP onwards. They therefore provide you with an easy way to monitor Microsoft network traffic, but can also monitor Linux or Unix servers.

In addition to network traffic visualization and monitoring, PRTG offers availability and performance monitoring. More than 130 sensor types make monitoring anything from Amazon Cloudwatch servers to VMware servers easy. The software even includes an SNMP trap receiver and a free syslog server: it acts as a central syslog and SNMP trap server which logs and analyzes important network events. Based on the logs and other monitoring data, PRTG triggers alarms which notify you of issues that need your attention, enabling you to proactively troubleshoot your network. You can chose from a variety of different alarms: send SNMP traps, text or pager messages, emails, play a sound, execute an application, etc.

The PRTG Network Traffic Monitoring Tools are available in two editions. For basic, free network monitoring, the Freeware Edition may be downloaded and used for personal and commercial use completely free of charge. For more advanced needs, licenses for the Commercial Editions start at $400 / €300.