Comprehensive network monitoring tools to watch in 2020

Network monitoring is one of the most important network management methods for enterprises, and it is also an operation that network engineers and network administrators continue to pay attention to and optimize. In 2019, we introduced a lot of network monitoring, performance monitoring, and application performance monitoring tools. This article will sort out some comprehensive network monitoring tools from the perspective of selecting suppliers, so that everyone can make screening and subsequent in-depth selection in terms of functions and costs.

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Accedian

Platform: Accedian Skylight PVX

Accedian Skylight PVX is a unified network and application performance management solution. Skylight uses both physical and virtual traffic capture devices to collect network flows and application transactions. All capture devices are linked to a central data store. They also provide a packet broker that can remotely capture network data and pass it to the data store for analysis. Skylight displays performance data for each application flow and allows users to use multiple filters to refine searches.

AppNeta

Platform: AppNeta Performance Manager

AppNeta Performance Manager is a network monitoring tool that uses deep packet inspection to go beyond NetFlow and discover insights about 100% of an enterprise's network traffic. Their deep packet inspection engine can identify over 2,000 applications and send analytics to AppNeta's cloud platform. At the core of AppNeta's technology is TruPath, which provides real-time diagnostics and reports on detailed information and performance issues. TruPath sends packets at regular intervals to monitor every path from one end of the network to the other.

Broadcom

Platform: DX NetOps

CA Technologies, a subsidiary of Broadcom, offers DX NetOps, a network monitoring and analysis software that combines traditional network and system monitoring with full-stack analysis. The tool can discover multiple types of networks and display them in a single-window dashboard that allows users to create contextual monitoring workflows. Broadcom's AIOps platform also enhances DX NetOps, combining NetOps and AIOps to proactively resolve network problems through automatic remediation capabilities.

Cisco

Platform: Cisco Prime Performance Manager

Cisco Prime Performance Manager, a subset of Cisco Prime, is a network monitoring application that extracts actionable information from the entire network, including core, aggregation, and access networks. Cisco Prime can collect data on any SNMP-enabled device using standards-based data collection methods and then generate reports on a user-determined schedule. Users can switch between Cisco's default views and their own configured views to provide a better picture of the network.

Corvil

Platform: Corvil Analytics

Corvil Anayltics is a network monitoring and analytics suite that automates the discovery and decoding of network performance data. With Corvil Analytics, users can analyze raw packet data from their network and discover real-time insights. The solution allows network administrators to capture and store packets instantly. Currently, Corvil offers more than 500 different analytics plug-ins that are bundled into solution packages. Each plug-in helps enterprises decipher information from specific network protocols and applications.

Dynatrace

Platform: Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform

Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform is an all-in-one monitoring platform that combines network, application, and infrastructure monitoring with AIOps, digital experience management, and digital business analytics. Dynatrace monitors network communications on a process-by-process basis, rather than at the host level. It also supports the quality and performance of all network connections between processes, even between virtualized clouds and data centers.

ExtraHop

Platform: ExtraHop Reveal(x)

ExtraHop Reveal(x) is a cloud-based network detection and response platform that gives enterprises real-time visibility into their network from the inside out. Reveal(x) performs real-time analysis to automatically discover and classify critical events. Users can see every action that occurs on the network and correct any problems or errors. When Reveal(x) detects a problem or suspicious event, it automatically uses threat intelligence capabilities to conduct further investigation and respond based on the findings.

Flowmon

Platform: Flowmon

Flowmon is a flow-based network monitoring tool that provides network visibility and control along with cloud operations, security operations, and DDoS protection. It provides administrators and security engineers with a complete understanding of everything happening on the network. Flowmon Probes provide network flow monitoring and analysis to identify any issues in network communications. Flowmon Collectors receive flow data and provide continuous visibility into every corner of the network.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Platform: HPE Intelligent Management Center

HPE Intelligent Management Center is a network monitoring platform that manages data centers and core networks and provides well-defined network data to IT teams. Intelligent Management Center has a modular platform that covers traffic analysis, remote network management, and intelligence reporting. HPE provides several additional modules for Intelligent Management Center that cover functions such as traffic analysis, virtual application networking, and remote infrastructure monitoring and management.

Infovista

Platform: Infovista VistaInsight

Infovista VistaInsight is a network monitoring and service assurance solution that provides users with complete visibility into their network activity. InfoVista's tools, including VistaInsight, support cloud and SSL-based applications, VXLAN, and many other features. With VistaInsight, users can manage multi-vendor VNF performance, VNF capacity optimization, and service modeling with one service assurance solution, thereby reducing NFV startup, design, testing, and operation time.

ipswitch

Platform: Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold

Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold is a comprehensive monitoring software suite that covers infrastructure, application performance management, and network monitoring. The WhatsUp Gold monitoring dashboard enables users to track resource usage and billing of their cloud environments, providing cost justification for management. The solution can automatically discover, map, and monitor cloud deployments, including AWS and Azure, and can scale to multiple remote networks.

Kentik

Platform: Kentik Platform

Kentik is a network monitoring and AIOps platform that provides complete network visibility, combining NetFlow network monitoring tools with solutions for ingesting data, such as VPC flow logs, business context, and application context. The Kentik platform captures network flow data views and enriches them with key business data, so that every network event or analysis is related to business information - revenue and cost, customer and user experience, performance and risk.

LiveAction

Platform: LiveAction LiveNX

LiveAction LiveNX is a network performance and analytics platform that simplifies network monitoring and configuration. LiveNX leverages NetFlow, QoS, and IP service-level agreements to help with capacity planning and performance benchmarking. Users can also generate synthetic network traffic with LiveNX to perform pre-deployment assessments. LiveAction also offers LiveNX Insight, a machine learning-based LiveNX module that continuously identifies patterns and insights from customer metadata.

LogicMonitor

Platform: LogicMonitor Platform

LogicMonitor is a SaaS-based agentless network monitoring solution that enables enterprises to discover all network devices and interfaces. Through alerts and interface indicators, users can better understand error rates, network usage and throughput. LogicMonitor's monitoring platform has a library of more than 1,000 pre-built monitoring templates that provide automatic discovery, monitoring and alerting for multiple applications and deployments including AIX, VMware and Tomcat.

LogRhythm

Platform: LogRhythm NetworkXDR

LogRhythm NetworkXDR is a network security solution that detects network-borne threats in real time and has SOAR capabilities. NetworkXDR identifies thousands of applications at Layer 7 for threat hunting with advanced analytics and customizable dashboards to identify high-risk network activities at the network and application level to minimize false positives. To gain deep insight into the network, LogRhythm NetworkXDR can search rich network traffic metadata using fully selective intelligent packet capture.

ManageEngine

Platform: ManageEngine OpManager Plus

ManageEngine OpManager Plus is an integrated monitoring tool that gives you a comprehensive view of your network, applications, and infrastructure. OpManager Plus monitors the health of all user network devices in real-time through various protocols. The solution can monitor key network metrics (including packet loss, errors, and drops) and the health of device hardware, among other factors. It also provides network configuration management capabilities with support for multiple hardware vendors and real-time configuration change tracking.

Monitis

Platform: Monitis

Monitis is a web-based network monitoring tool that enables enterprises to control their IT systems no matter where they are located. Monitis web-based network monitoring solution provides users with agent-based and agentless network device monitoring. It also has network bandwidth monitoring, SNMP devices, TCP protocol, and WAN link capabilities. The solution provides a combination of website uptime monitoring, full page load, synthetic transaction monitoring, and web stress testing.

NETSCOUT

Platform: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is a network monitoring and service assurance platform that provides complete visibility into infrastructure, interdependencies, and applications. The tool leverages adaptive service intelligence technology to allow continuous monitoring and analysis of network traffic data. nGeniusONE users can test the performance of wired and wireless networks to stay ahead of performance issues before and after deployment. NETSCOUT can analyze wire flow, NetFlow, and MIB2 data in the same solution.

Opmantek

Platform: Opmantek NMIS Professional

Opmantek Network Management Information System (NMIS) Professional is an intelligent network management and infrastructure monitoring solution available as a professional version of Opmantek's open source network management product. NMIS is a scalable, flexible network management system that can classify events based on business impact. The solution can be extended with several modules provided by Opmantek, including opCharts for network mapping and opReports for data reporting.

Paessler

Platform: Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a network monitoring solution that allows administrators to stay ahead of IT infrastructure issues. PRTG offers features such as fault and traffic analysis, packet sniffing, and more; they also offer other monitoring services such as cloud, database, and bandwidth monitoring. Paessler monitors the network using a variety of technologies to ensure the availability of network components and measure traffic and usage. The web interface is AJAX-based and has high security standards and a responsive design.

Plixer

Platform: Plixer Scrutinizer

Plixer Scrutinizer is a network monitoring and network traffic analysis system that collects network flow data and metadata from every network conversation. Scrutinizer can also be used as a network forensics and security tool. Plixer's tool correlates network data with metadata from various network locations to provide better context for network events. In addition, Scrutinizer also has integration capabilities with technologies from companies such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, and VMware.

Riverbed

Platform: Riverbed SteelCentral

Riverbed SteelCentral is a network monitoring and application performance monitoring suite that provides complete network visibility, analysis, troubleshooting, and user monitoring. Their network performance management platform acts as a suite of monitoring and management tools, such as AppResponse for packet capture and NetProfiler for flow-based analysis. Riverbed offers four levels of support to customers, depending on how long they need to replace equipment in the event of a network failure.

SevOne

Platform: SevOne Data Platform

SevOne Data Platform is a network monitoring and analytics solution that provides a modern, comprehensive collection of network performance metrics. The vendor focuses on infrastructure monitoring while also working with flow and log monitoring. SevOne Data Platform handles the collection of network performance metrics and flow data. The solution supports more than 10,000 different network devices and supports onboard SNMP devices within 10 business days.

SolarWinds

Platform: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitoring

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, along with other SolarWinds solutions, offers extensive analysis and management capabilities. With Network Performance Monitor, users can reduce unnecessary network alert flooding by creating alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions, defined parent/child dependencies, and network topology. SolarWinds also offers a network path analysis feature through NetPath, which provides visual analysis and problem resolution.

Statseeker

Platform: Statseeker

Statseeker is used to monitor every physical, virtual, and logical interface in an enterprise. The Statseeker monitoring tool focuses primarily on rapid deployment and low-cost scalability. Statseeker uses SNMP discovery to locate devices, interfaces, and other SNMP-enabled components. Users can direct the discovery process to specific devices. It also provides anomaly detection capabilities by comparing current network data to historical patterns.

ThousandEyes

Platform: ThousandEyes Network Intelligence

ThousandEyes Network Intelligence is a cloud-based network monitoring and intelligence solution that enables IT teams to diagnose performance issues for network infrastructure and applications. With Network Intelligence, administrators can quickly analyze performance using specialized visualizations across multiple layers of network data. ThousandEyes' Network Intelligence analytics help diagnose a wide range of infrastructure, service, and application issues. The vendor uses agents to generate synthetic traffic to probe network patterns and flows.

VIAVI

Platform: VIAVI Observer Platform

The VIAVI Solutions Observer platform, comprised of Apex, GigaStor and GigaFlow, provides network visibility to NetOps and SecOps teams to help manage daily IT operations, mitigate risk, and troubleshoot performance and security issues. VIAVI provides an end-user experience scoring model that identifies issues with scope and impact context, isolating the problem domain.

Zabbix

Platform: Zabbix 4.4

Zabbix 4.4 is an open source network performance monitoring solution available as software and virtual appliance downloads. The solution has been optimized for high performance in monitoring operating system and application-specific metrics. Zabbix's network health monitoring capabilities alert you when a link is down, the system status is critical, the device temperature is too high or too low, the power supply is running low, or the disk space is low.