Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for PRTG
- Which license will be applicable when upgrading my IPCheck 5 / PRTG 6 license?
- Do I need the Freeware edition or one of the Commercial editions?
- Which license do I need?
- What counts as a sensor?
- What is the difference between NetFlow Sensors and NetFlow Collectors?
- How many sensors can I monitor using PRTG Network Monitor?
For more technical questions, SNMP related questions and for further information about our network monitoring software, please have a look at the Paessler Knowledge Base and our support forums.
Answers
Q: Which license will be applicable when upgrading my IPCheck 5 / PRTG 6 license?
Upgrade from IPCheck Server Monitor
As an user of IPCheck Server Monitor with active maintenance contract you can upgrade your installation to PRTG Network Monitor for free.
As of the final release of PRTG Network Monitor you can download the new software at your personal service center. Here, you can also renew the maintenance for your IPCheck license.
Since the licensing model of PRTG Network Monitor differs from the licensing model of IPCheck Server Monitor, we implemented an upgrade path. Many customers will benefit from the upgrade not only by having more features but also by having more sensors. For details see the table below:
| IPCheck Server Monitor | PRTG Network Monitor |
|---|---|
| IPCheck Standard (1 user / 25 sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Pro 100 |
| IPCheck Professional (1 user / 200 sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Enterprise 500 |
| IPCheck Small Enterprise (2 user / 400 sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Enterprise 500 |
| IPCheck Medium Enterprise (5 user / 1.000 sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Enterprise 1.000 |
| IPCheck Enterprise (10 user / unlimited sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Enterprise Unlimited |
| IPCheck ISP (100 user / unlimited sensors) | PRTG Network Monitor Enterprise Unlimited |
PRTG Network Monitor has no user limitations, assuch you can set up as many users as you need.
Upgrade for PRTG Traffic Grapher
The smallest license of PRTG 6 - the PRTG Pro 25 - will no longer be offered for PRTG Network Monitor. In exchange the freeware license was expanded to 10 sensors.
PRTG Traffic Grapher Pro 25 licenses will be upgraded to the Pro 100 license for free.
Q: Do I need the Freeware edition or one of the Commercial editions?
The Freeware edition is free for personal and commercial use but is limited to monitoring up to 10 sensors. If you want to monitor more sensors you must purchase one of our commercial editions. The licenses of the commercial editions are based on the overall sensor count. Commercial editions start from 100 sensors up to an unlimited number of sensors.
Q: Which license do I need?
To keep the licensing model as lean as possible, PRTG Network Monitor licenses differ only by the number of supported sensors (100, 500, 1000 and unlimited). Which license you need depends on how many sensors you want to monitor. If you want to monitor e.g. all ports of a 24 port switch you will need 24 sensors. Please refer to the next FAQ to fin out what counts as a sensor.
Q: What counts as a sensor?
- SNMP monitoring of traffic/bandwidth on one port of any device (e.g. switch, firewall, server) using the MIB2 standard (incoming and outgoing traffic count as one sensor)
- Monitoring errors/min, unicast packets/s, non-unicast packets/s on one port of a device via SNMP using the MIB2 standard (incoming and outgoing readings count as one sensor)
- Monitoring one other system parameter via SNMP (e.g. CPU, disk space, etc.) that is accessible via a single OID
- Monitoring traffic going through one local network card (NIC) via Packet Sniffing. If you use filtering, each set of filters counts as one sensor.
- NetFlow sensors are not included in the PRTG Network monitor license. These can be purchased as add-on. One NetFlow sensor also allows to monitor different measuring points within one graph.
The number of actual hardware devices is not taken into account at all, only the number of sensors. For the "unlimited licenses" the number of sensors that can be monitored is not programmatically limited by the software itself, but may be limited by your software, hardware and network. See Planning large installations of PRTG Network Monitor.
Q: What is the difference between NetFlow Sensors and NetFlow Collectors?
PRTG Traffic Grapher (version 6) requires NetFlow Collectors to monitor Cisco devices using Cisco's NetFlow protocol, one NetFlow Collector per monitored device.
With PRTG Network Monitor (version 7) we changed the terminology and the licensing of the NetFlow add on. These are now called NetFlow Sensors and are counted just as "normal" sensors in PRTG.
One NetFlow Sensor provides you with one graph that also allows you to monitor different parameters, however you might also need multiple sensors for one device if you want to monitor e.g. 24 ports of one switch via NetFlow. The NetFlow Sensors no longer reduce the number of "normal" PRTG sensors any more.
If you have licensed NetFlow Collectors for PRTG Traffic Grapher 6 in the past, these can be used in PRTG Network Monitor 7 and will be converted automatically to the corresponding number of NetFlow Sensors (x5) when entering the NetFlow key in version 7.
