Network monitoring

The right piece of network monitoring software could save you both time and money. Dave Mitchell puts four products through their paces

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An essential IT support role is monitoring network health and providing a rapid response service to ensure problems or faults don't impact on business productivity. This can be a big ask for IT managers in small businesses, as shrinking budgets in these challenging times may mean they could be a department of one.

It doesn't need to be difficult, however: network monitoring software can keep support staff at the top of their game. The best products will tell you precisely what's on the network, how well it's performing, and alert you to any issues as soon as they happen. The good news for small IT departments is that there are plenty of affordable products available today, all capable of providing a wealth of information about network, device and application health.

In this month's buyer's guide, we look at four of the top monitoring solutions on the market from AdRem Software, Paessler, Progress Software and Solar Winds. Each one offers an impressive range of monitoring and troubleshooting tools, and we've put them through their paces in the lab to help you choose the right one.

Colour-coded icons in NetCrunch show the status of each device

Licence to confuse 

All four products on review are capable of presenting a huge amount of detail about your network. However, before choosing one it would be wise to make an inventory of all your systems as the number and type you want to monitor could have a big impact on costs.

The reason we recommend this is because each product uses different licensing models that can be based on the number of monitored elements, sensors or devices. Device licences may initially seem more expensive but are easier to understand, as they allow you to monitor everything on a device regardless of the number of components it has.