Network Monitoring And Management

The Top 8 Network Diagnostics Tools

Explore the top network diagnostics solutions with features like network traffic analysis, network performance monitoring, and network troubleshooting.

Last updated on Nov 15, 2024

Written by Joel Witts

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 8 Network Diagnostics Tools Include:

1. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
2. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
3. ManageEngine OPManager
4. LogicMonitor Envision
5. IBM Cloud Monitoring
6. ExtraHop Reveal(x)
7. DataDog Network Performance Monitoring
8. Catchpoint

Network diagnostics tools are essential for organizations to monitor their network for performance issues, security risks, and outages. Network diagnostics tools continuously monitor networks for problems, then provide alerts and reports to enable admins to quickly and efficiently respond if an issue arises.

Network diagnostics tools are installed on network devices. These tools will monitor all network traffic, and collect data to analyze network performance, status, and reliability. These insights are displayed in a real-time reporting console, with historical insights and analytics. If an issue or security vulnerability is detected, admins will be alerted, and the problem can be remediated.

These tools are critical for organizations. They help ensure networks are running smoothly and efficiently, resulting in a strong end-user experience. They are also crucial to preventing and mitigating against the risk of security breaches and cyberattacks. They can, for example, provide alert diagnostics if there is a sudden spike in network users, a common sign of a DDoS attack.

In this article, we’ll cover the top network diagnostics tools. We’ll compare key features, including network monitoring, configuration policies, and alerting to help you find the right solution for your organization.

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

Paessler is a dedicated network monitoring provider, with a suite of solutions that enable teams to optimize their IT, OT, and IoT infrastructures. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a leading service for network analysis and diagnostics, designed for small and mid-sized network infrastructures. It provides alerting, maps and dashboards, distributed network monitoring, and comprehensive reporting to help admins monitor and resolve network issues. Paessler is used by 500,000 organizations worldwide.

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor Features:

Comprehensive monitoring of complex IT environments
Visualizes historical network data to find and detect anomalies
Custom alarms and alerting
Clear, comprehensive analytics and reporting dashboards
Server diagnostics using a DNS sensor
Event log monitoring and notifications
Fast deployment with automated network discovery

Expert Insights’ Comments: Paessler PRTG Network Monitor delivers comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostics for small and mid-sized network infrastructures. The solution’s streamlined dashboards help admins to quickly identify critical data trends, then remediate issues. This is enhanced by custom alerting that helps to improve detection and resolution times. The service is highly flexible and customizable; it is easy-to-set-up, and use. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a powerful, all-in-one network monitor solution for midsized organizations.

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SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

SolarWinds is a market leader in the IT management software space. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Solution is a highly scalable, multi-vendor network monitoring solution, that provides deep network insights with advanced alerting and mapping. This solution can be used in gathering network, enabling teams to identify and resolve network issues, like performance errors, outages, and connectivity problems, quickly.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Features:

Latency tests to monitor network device availability and performance
Automated alerting for network performance issues
Historical network performance tracking, with timelines
Detailed analytics and contextual reporting with customizable charts and dashboards
In-depth diagnostics and network insights

Expert Insights’ Comments: SolarWinds Performance Monitor is a leading network monitoring service, with an expansive range of features including deep packet inspection, monitoring router traffic, and network diagnostics. The service provides a clear visual representation of network health and performance, with contextual analysis and automated alerting to help teams more quickly identify the root cause of issues and remediate against them. SolarWinds Performance Monitor is a strong, scalable option for large environments, offering multi-vendor performance and availability monitoring, with clear, customizable reporting and dashboards.

ManageEngine OPManager

ManageEngine (a division of Zoho) is a leading provider of security and IT management services, offering more than 60 enterprise software products across a broad range of use cases. ManageEngine OPManager is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostics solution that enables teams to monitor and troubleshoot across routers, switches, and servers. OpManager gives you real-time network monitoring and detailed analytics. ManageEngine is used by over 280,000 customers globally.

ManageEngine OPManager Features:

Real-time in-depth visibility and network monitoring
Network visualization mapping and network management
Security alerting with triaged Alarms
Fault management and network event tracking
End-to-end visibility and analytics
Integration troubleshooting with planning and configuration management

Expert Insights’ Comments: ManageEngine offer a comprehensive and highly scalable network monitoring and diagnostics options for teams. It covers network devices, physical and virtual servers, and multi-site/distributed networks. The service is easy to manage and can be fully customized. OPManager is an easy-to-manage, highly customizable, monitoring and diagnostics solution, which is scalable and for mid-sized infrastructure environments.

LogicMonitor Envision

LogicMonitor is a global cloud and infrastructure monitoring provider that offers extensive monitoring capabilities to help teams maintain and improve networks, cloud applications, and databases. LogicMonitor’s Envision solution is a real-time network monitoring tool which monitors on-premises networks, cloud environments, and data centres, thereby enabling teams to identify performance and security issues. This is made more effective through using machine learning driven analysis and remediation. Envision monitors and visualizes your entire network infrastructure within one unified platform.

LogicMonitor Envision Features:

Automated set up and configuration with auto-discovery for network devices
Advanced monitoring coverage for any network
2,500 integrations with common services, including Cisco, and Juniper for comprehensive visibility
Dynamic topology mapping for contextualizing network traffic and alerts
Intelligent alerting and end-to-end visibility with root cause analysis
Detailed reporting and visibility into network performance

Expert Insights’ Comments: LogicMonitor offers a comprehensive network monitoring solution. It’s easy to setup and configure, with automated installation and dynamic discovery. It covers all networks, whether on-premises, across multiple data centers, or in cloud, and provides real-time visibility and reporting, with clear customizable dashboards. Admins can configure custom alerts to streamline workflows and manage network issues more efficiently. LogicMonitor is a strong network monitoring service, particularly for enterprises and MSPs covering manufacturing, retail, education, and local government.

IBM Cloud Monitoring

IBM Cloud is a full-stack cloud service, that includes over 170 different products and services across a vast range of use cases. IBM’s Cloud Monitoring service is a fully managed, enterprise-focused monitoring service. It is designed to provide accurate monitoring, application visibility, alerting, and troubleshooting, for organizations that develop business critical applications at scale. The service automatically discovers networks, applications, and containers, providing a comprehensive view into large, complex network environments.

IBM Cloud Monitoring Features:

Reporting of network incidents and metrics
Custom visualizations and dashboards of your whole environment
Automated discovery of apps, containers, hosts, and networks
Embedded security and compliance services
Proactive notifications for faster remediation of issues and risks
Group and user management with per-user controls

Expert Insights’ Comments: IBM Cloud Monitoring is a comprehensive, and highly scalable, managed network monitoring solution. It can help teams to accelerate identification and resolution of network incidents, with proactive security alerting. The service automatically maps your network environment, with predefined and customizable dashboards to help teams quickly monitor infrastructure and track key metrics. IBM Cloud Monitoring is an effective solution that is suited for large enterprise teams looking for a managed monitoring and diagnostics service.

ExtraHop Reveal(x)

ExtraHop is a cybersecurity provider offering a comprehensive detection and response platform. The solution leverages AI tools to enable faster detection and remediation of network risks. ExtraHop’s network performance monitoring solution, Reveal(x), provides complete, real-time visibility into network risks and performance issues, thereby simplifying workflows with security alerts and automated remediation steps. Reveal(x) covers on-prem, cloud and hybrid environments in a single platform.

ExtraHop Reveal(x) Features:

Complete network coverage with detailed forensics and packet capture
Behavioral analytics and AI automatically detect performance issues and advanced security threats, such as ransomware
Granular visibility into context and precise packet details, to ensure faster remediation of issues
SaaS, cloud-based solution with a simplified deployment model
Open API to integrate network monitoring threat telemetry with other common enterprise providers

Expert Insights’ Comments: ExtraHop is a comprehensive platform for continuous, real-time network monitoring and visibility. The platform uses advanced machine learning and behavioral analytics tools to drive automated threat detection, investigation, and response. The solution utilizes robust alerting and granular contextual analysis. The platform is cloud-based and easy to implement. It has a scalable SaaS-based model, with a subscription option that includes access to ExtraHop’s Reveal(x) Advisor SOC analyst team. ExtraHop is a comprehensive network security and monitoring tool for enterprises in the financial services, healthcare, and US public sector.

DataDog Network Performance Monitoring

DataDog is a popular monitoring platform for cloud applications, networks, servers, containers, and databases. DataDog’s comprehensive platform enables teams to avoid network downtime, identify security risks, and resolve network problems. As a network performance monitoring tool, it provides complete visibility over on-premises, hybrid, and cloud networks, including the performance of connections among hosts, services, and virtual private clouds.

DataDog Network Performance Monitoring Features:

Real-time network performance monitoring, with end-to-end visibility, including application-layer performance
Visualization of network traffic across applications, containers, availability zones, and datacenters
Automated alerting, with customizable alerting workflow logic
Automatically detects new network devices and tracks health status
Intuitive visual interface with detailed reporting on network health
Predicts potential network issues, enabling teams to implement proactive mitigation methods

Expert Insights’ Comments: DataDog offer a comprehensive network performance monitoring tool. It enables real time network performance tracking, with detailed analytics and reporting into network health and performance issues. It can identify network outages, including those from third-party tools. DataDog makes it simple for teams to monitor complex network environments, with automated remediation tools and customized alerting workflow logic. It is a strong choice for organizations with complex network environments, requiring comprehensive performance monitoring. The solution is trusted by thousands of enterprise customers, including Samsung, Sony, and Comcast.

Catchpoint

Catchpoint is a resilience, observability, and monitoring tool that enables teams to catch threats and performance issues across their internet stack quickly and efficiently. The Catchpoint platform offers comprehensive visualizations with advanced analytics to give you insight into network issues and effectiveness. This platform was developed for online retailers and cloud service providers to identify and remediate network performance issues. The solution monitors thousands of points across your networks and ISP to provide visibility into areas that could affect your customers, networks, apps, and website performance.

Catchpoint Features:

Identifies issues across the internet stack, including routers, firewalls, DNS, and cloud apps
Real-time analytics and operational intelligence with fully customizable dashboard
Granular data visibility with detailed insights and analytics across global networks
Integrates with existing tools for seamless deployment
Accelerates remediation against threats with hundreds of integrations and open APIs
Managed services and expert advice option, with 24/7 incident monitoring

Expert Insights’ Comments: Catchpoint is a full stack internet monitoring application, designed for global cloud service providers and retailers. It allows organizations to monitor their entire application stack to proactively identify, diagnose, and remediate against network issues and optimize performance. The tool ensures that customer experience is not impacted by network downtime and helps to improve both workforce and consumer applications. Catchpoint is used by leading cloud providers, such as SAP, to implement custom alerting for performance issues and improve remediation times.

FAQs

What Are Network Diagnostics Tools?

Network diagnostic tools are software solutions that are designed to monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot issues with networks. They analyze the performance, reliability, and security of computer networks, and can automate remediation of network errors. Network diagnostic tools are critical to help prevent network downtime and cyber-attacks. They help admins to quickly identify if a security breach or a DDoS attack is taking place.

Key features include real-time network monitoring, configuration policies for devices components and compliances, performance alerting, and topology mapping. They allow teams to monitor network performance and collect data for forensic analysis of network activity.

Network diagnostic tools are used by network administrators, IT professionals, and developers to discover network errors, optimize network performance, and troubleshoot issues. They help to make the process of identifying and fixing network security issues much faster, and more scalable as your organization grows.

How Do Network Diagnostics Tools Work?

Network diagnostics tools continuously analyze and monitor networks to identify and diagnose network problems. The tools can work in a variety of ways, including analyzing traffic, testing network connectivity, and monitoring configuration settings.

These tools work by using in-depth packet analysis to collect and inspect data over a computer network. They collect data from network devices to monitor and analyze all network traffic, which enables them to detect and flag issues to network admins. Issues could include network outages, performance issues, or security vulnerabilities.

When an issue is detected, these solutions can also help to fix the problem, by alerting admins, automating workflows, and providing guidance or reporting into issues. For example, the tool could alert admins that a network performance or security issue has occurred, then suggest remediation steps, such as updating software or hardware.

What Key Features Do Network Diagnostics Tools Offer?

Network diagnostics tools are services that can cover a broad range of use cases for different organizations. Common key features that these services provide include:

Network Monitoring: Continuous network monitoring to identify performance issues and reduce network downtime
Automated Alerting: Alerting admins to performance issues across the network
Diagnostics And Evaluation: Speeding up remediation by offering analysis with diagnostics and recommendations
Admin Dashboard: In-depth reporting and network analytics with historical performance tracking
Custom Reports And Alerts: Teams can configure custom reports with alerting to detect issues

Joel Witts

Content Director

Joel Witts is the Content Director at Expert Insights, meaning he oversees all articles published and topics covered. He is an experienced journalist and writer, specialising in identity and access management, Zero Trust, cloud business technologies, and cybersecurity. Joel is a co-host of the Expert Insights Podcast and conducts regular interviews with leading B2B tech industry experts, including directors at Microsoft and Google. Joel holds a First Class Honours degree in Journalism from Cardiff University.

Laura Iannini

Cybersecurity Analyst

Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.