Network monitoring

[Badaz52]

Looking for a good network monitoring tool, just want to analyse our switching toplogy etc. Any good free ones? Someone mentioned cacti to me but I don't know the first thing about linux.

[Netwacky87]

https://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-troubleshooting-tool/

[ellsandell]

PRTG is free for under 100 sensors and can be installed on windows.

 

I personally like LibreNMS, but it’s a little more complex to install. Although pretty sure there are Docker containers available.

[ITGURU]

I use a mixture - TheDude is free (windows install), you can use the older local install rather than the newer client/server version.

LanTopology is good for scanning network and showing uplink ports etc, however you need snmp enabled switches for this to work.

I use the free PRTG network monitor version for monitoring exchange DAG and services and HP System Insight Manager to monitor server health.

 

Also, just started to look into Zabbix - free and comes as a downloading VM or ISO for simple install even if you know nothing about Linux!

[eddyc]

We use Observium. I’m not most competent with Linux but found some really simple guides to get it set up. It’s a really useful monitoring tool

[andyfield]

I used to use observium, now changed to libre NMS. Love it!

[gerardsweeney]

Hi, folks..

 

Sorry to hijack this slightly - but since you've already listed a few free products.

 

One of the issues we have is that schoolX report that network connectivity is really slow.

Our Infra team can look and see that SchoolX is using all of its bandwidth - but they can't tell us WHAT is using it live.

 

Can any of the tools you guys listed above do this?

EG identify that device abcd is using 50 of capacity%, or that switch port 14 is working harder or something?

 

That's likely horribly simplistic - but you get what I mean

 

Thanks!

Gerard

[TechMonkey]

@Badaz52 - We use PRTG and have the maps up on a display board in the office, gives great visibility and a great talking point when staff come in. We only monitor availability though, not monitoring individual ports except the WAN port.

@gerardsweeney - That would have to be a device function, so your filter or firewall and it would have to have Application awareness. So I think Fortinet do something, Smoothwall have a Layer 7 module but I don't think you can report on it or view in real time. The only other way to do it would be to monitor all ports and trace back where the traffic is coming from, identify the device and then look at it. Wouldn't be very instantaneous but would give a better overview, if say there wasn't a single port hogging the bandwidth you know the school maybe needs to upgrade the link.

[gerardsweeney]

The only other way to do it would be to monitor all ports and trace back where the traffic is coming from, identify the device and then look at it. Wouldn't be very instantaneous but would give a better overview, if say there wasn't a single port hogging the bandwidth you know the school maybe needs to upgrade the link.

 

This "other way" sounds like what we're looking for, to be honest.

It's not a big school in terms of wired kit, so if we could monitor all 24 or 48 ports on the switch for the school (told you it wasn't big!).

Would that need to be something hardware dependent? We have Cisco 3560s, I think.

Or is there a way to get a Windows application to be able to interrogate the ports?

 

Sorry if this all sounds desperately vague.. I'm a desktop guy just trying to get over a few hurdles - ideally without spending money!

[TechMonkey]

This "other way" sounds like what we're looking for, to be honest.

It's not a big school in terms of wired kit, so if we could monitor all 24 or 48 ports on the switch for the school (told you it wasn't big!).

Would that need to be something hardware dependent? We have Cisco 3560s, I think.

Or is there a way to get a Windows application to be able to interrogate the ports?

 

Sorry if this all sounds desperately vague.. I'm a desktop guy just trying to get over a few hurdles - ideally without spending money!

 

Try PRTG, you get 100 free sensors, you will need the SNMP details but it will sniff out the ports once that is done. You can create a dashboard to show you all the graphs or details and away you go.

 

The other systems people mentioned would work as well, but maybe more involved with setup. So maybe use PRTG to get an idea if the concept works and is feasible and then investigate the others.

[networkmangler]

I have a raspberry pi running Nems Linux: https://nemslinux.com/

 

It's essentially Nagios with alot of the hard work done for you

[Vegas]

We use Mutiny