PRTG Network Monitor

First of all: Actually (April 2016) the product is free for up to 100 Sensors!

I was searching for an easy solution to monitor the internetconnection of one of my customers from outside. They sporadically experienced strange bandwidth problems and the cable provider didn't solve the problem within months. So while searching for an easy to install and use monitoring (simple ping) solution I found PRTG from Paessler in Nuremberg. I 've heard of it before as the Windows based alternative to Nagios.

What can I say: I expected a solid Dice Game and ended up in Las Vegas!

Installed withing minutes on a small Celeron machine running Windows 7. This runs the core Server and the Probe. You create Groups within the Windows (or Browserbased) Desktop. Within those Groups you create Devices and Sensors (Ping, HTTP, FTP, NTP, SIP, SMTP, SNMP Switch Traffic, ... and I'd say hundreds of others) at Locations you can define and are shown on a map. A configurable HTTPS allows secure Browser and mobile APP access. I use the one for my Windows phone that shows me my favorite (customer) Sensors directly.

Automatically scan your Network (that might create a lot of Devices and Sensors, especially when you are using SNMP ready Switches, but don't worry, just pause them before you run out of your licenses). Monitor Switch Traffic if you wonder how long the Windows 10 updates disturb your other Machines. You can install remote Probes in other networks to monitor them and still collect all data on one central monitoring server.

PS: In the end, the cable provider changed the modem after I sent them several times very clear screenshots from PRTG where you could see the 1800 ms echos all three weeks instead of 32 ms the rest of the time.

Over the years we have experienced failures in our network which have allowed us to learn details that we could correct over time, usually our technical support function was corrective, that is, when a failure occurred our team worked and corrected the anomaly presented, with PRTG we could proactively turn the work into preventive, with the possibility of preconfiguring thresholds on nodes and other specific equipment we could detect failures such as traffic jams, loops and even in some BRAS servers failures such as lack of IPv4 addresses; All this allowed us to improve the network's operability, reducing downtime.

The software is very easy to set up, which is a plus. But for some reason it keeps giving faults reports, and sometimes would randomly crash. Tested on multiple devices. Has potential to be great though.

100% satisfied with it