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2020-NETWORKING
The year 2020 has been remarkably different due to the pandemic. It has largely changed the human perspective of experiencing the world with all the major activities which kept the world at a running pace coming to a sudden halt, confining all the humans indoors, and much to the distress of those who are not privileged.
With limited-to-no access to education and the workplace, the world by and large depended on network connectivity to manage and monitor crucial infrastructure and working systems. This is the most recent example of the dependency and importance of network connectivity in current and upcoming decades.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT
A network monitoring tool is a critical process where all network components like routers, switches, firewalls, service, and VMs are monitored for fault and performance and evaluated continuously to maintain and optimise their availability.
Network management manages network performance and fault identification efficiently using various tools and technologies before it impacts the end-users. Different tools and software designed together to monitor and manage a safe networking system, with troubleshooting features, make it complex to manage overall.
They provide discovering, mapping, monitoring, alerting, and report of the system. There are many network system monitoring tools and software in the market, which makes it difficult to choose one good network monitoring tool.
Managing logs is also of great importance, all those log management tools work and service all different from each other. Log management, cloud monitoring and managed Elastic Stack hosting, among other things, needs powerful tools. Some of the best tools are listed on the site (https://www.techwhoop.com/log-management-tools/) and can help you immensely. Managing network for virtual infrastructure, uninterrupted remote access to services, cloud service monitoring is challenging in terms of security and technical efficiency.
So, a comprehensive management system that takes care of all the important functionalities with better precision is most sought after.
As the need for improved and advanced networking systems and their management has been crucial to keeping connectivity, sharing information on time, and managing data safely, there have been manifold advancements in network management tools and software. The network management system of the Information Technology (IT) marketplace environment has been crowded with many network monitoring tools and software, new features, and updates that get introduced almost every day. To stand out in such a competing and ever-changing market space of the IT world, the software, utility tools, and management system need to be outstanding in performance and upgradation too.
Best Network Management Tools and Software for IT Ecosystems in 2020
Choosing the best suitable network management tools and software among so many options available in the market for a connected organization based on its environment, requirements, as well as budget can be confusing and hence challenging.
Based on a primary web search on reporting by different correspondence in different websites, I have listed the following five among the top-performing network management tools and software with almost all necessary features that will be very useful in 2020.
Solar wind network performance monitor
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor has been listed by most of the analysts as best for advanced users.
The best features are Its Network Performance monitor, which can reduce network outages, Smarter scalability for robust environments, Wireless network monitoring and management, performance metrics for autonomous access points, Advanced alerting and auto-generating intelligent maps, Multi-vendor network monitoring and SDN monitoring with Cisco ACI support, Solid vulnerability scanning Advanced options to create and monitor policies Create HeatMaps of Wifi Networks to pin-point Wifi Dead Spots.
It is a top network monitoring system because of its diverse feature set, which makes it one of the best choices for network monitoring.
- This automatically discovers and maps networks and scans wired and Wi-Fi devices along with a topology view.
- Provide a customisable threshold network and can be rapidly deployed.
- Perform speed network troubleshooting.
- Analyze hop-to-hop performance on-premises in hybrid networks and in the cloud with NetPath™.
- Forecast and Capacity Planning
- Easy to Use Performance Dashboard to Analyze Critical Data points and paths across your network
- Simple/Complex Triggers options in Robust Alerting System.
- Monitor ACLs, VPN.
- Monitor Firewall.
- Analysis Critical Network Paths and Quickly Pinpoint Issues with Network Performance with Critical Path visualisation feature.
- Manage, Monitor, and Analyze Wi-Fi Networks within the Dashboard
- Monitor Hardware Health of all Servers, Firewalls, Routers, Switches, Desktops, laptops, and more.
- Monitors response time, availability, and performance.
- Monitoring for Critical Network Devices
PRTG Network Monitor
It is one of the best choices for organisations with low experience in network monitoring and is commonly known for its advanced infrastructure management.
- PRTG ( Paessler Router Traffic Grapher ) is an agentless network.
- It can monitor and classify system conditions such as bandwidth usage or uptime.
- Collect statistics, monitor local and wide area networks ( LAN & WAN), service websites, and applications.
- Operating system is Windows and written in Delph.
- It is a sensor-based software. Has over 200 different predefined sensors that retrieve statistics from the whole system.
- Monitor response times, processor memory, database information, template, and system status.
- Software completely operated by AJAX.
Progress WhatsUp gold
WhatsUp Gold (WUG) is a network monitoring software from Ipswich. One of the easiest tools with a user-friendly and visually attractive Dashboard.
- It provides complete visibility of the status and performance of network devices and servers in the cloud or on-premises.
- Automatically and manually configuration management.
- Cloud-based resources.
- Monitor application performance
- Provide network mapping, network performance, and scan wireless network.
- Provide wireless monitoring, cloud monitoring, storage monitoring, and advanced monitoring ( WMI, SSH, and HTTPS).
- Alert and report about system availability and status.
- You can expand its management by adding a proactive monitoring tool kit for network traffic apps virtual environment and device configuration
- Receive proactive notifications through SMS and email.
Zabbix
It is an open-source network performance monitoring software.
It is popular for its easy-to-use and pleasing Web GUI that is fully configurable. Since it is open-source, it has an active user community spread around the world and good documentation.
- Zabbix is powerful for SMB networks under 1,000 nodes.
- It includes prebuilt official and community development templates to integrate with network, applications, and endpoint and can also automatically monitor some processes.
- High performance and high capacity.
- Auto-discovery of servers, networks, devices, and interfaces.
- Distributed monitoring with centralised web administration
- Agent or agentless monitoring capabilities.
- No audit log
- Support for both polling and trapping machines
- Flexible user permission
- Secure user authentication
- Zabbix can use MySQL, mania DB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Orale, or IBM DB2 to store.
Logic Monitor
- Logic Monitor is an automated SaaS-based monitoring software.
- Agentless software
- Provide pre-built integration platforms and open API.
- It is designed to provide monitoring across networks, servers, applications, websites, and containers, including insight and reporting capabilities.
- Automatically discovers connected devices, collects their information and starts monitoring performance.
- Full visibility for hybrid IT.
- Cloud-based automated monitoring software.
- Provide custom graphs and charts to compare multiple devices on the same graph.
- Provide a user-friendly e-dashboard for users to monitor live performance.
- Offer tools to break down large data chunks into smaller silos for data monitors.