Network Monitoring And Management

The Top 10 Network Management Solutions

Network management solutions oversee and optimize the performance and security of computer networks by managing devices, monitoring traffic, and ensuring efficient communication.

Last updated on Jun 26, 2024

Written by Caitlin Jones

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 10 Network Management Solutions include:

1. Auvik Network Monitoring and Management
2. BackBox Network Automation Platform
3. Cisco Catalyst Center
4. Fortinet FortiManager
5. HPE Aruba AirWave
6. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management
7. ManageEngine OpManager
8. Paessler PRTG
9. SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper
10. Zabbix

Network management solutions are essential tools for monitoring, maintaining, and optimizing networks. They help IT administrators ensure the smooth and secure operation of their organizations’ IT infrastructure by identifying potential issues, automating management and maintenance tasks, and aggregating key performance and health data— all of which help IT teams identify and troubleshoot problems, and minimize network downtime. Network management solutions are also sometimes known as network management systems.

Network management solutions are available as both on-premises and cloud-based platforms, and can cater to both small businesses, large enterprises, and managed service providers (MSPs). They typically consist of various components and features that are designed to address different aspects of network management, such as monitoring network devices, analyzing traffic patterns, and managing security policies.

In this article, we’ll explore the top network management solutions to monitor, optimize, and secure your network. We’ll highlight the key use cases and features of each solution, including topology mapping, fault detection, performance monitoring, configuration management, real-time alerts, and reporting.

Auvik Network Monitoring and Management

Auvik Network Monitoring and Management is a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking to enhance their network visibility, troubleshooting efficiency, and remote management capabilities. With an automated mapping system, Auvik enables users to have complete control and real-time insight into their networks.

One of Auvik’s most notable features is its extensive out-of-box alerting system, which offers over 50 customizable options to notify users of any changes in their networks. This helps admins to anticipate and address potential network issues swiftly, reducing on-site visits and improving overall operational efficiency. Auvik’s interactive topology map allows users to seamlessly navigate through multiple sites or inspect specific devices in depth. Additionally, the platform’s intelligent network traffic analysis helps identify network activity and usage patterns, while its robust automation capabilities help to streamline essential tasks such as documentation and configuration backups.

Auvik’s cloud-based deployment and integrations allows for rapid adoption and compatibility with diverse networks. Auvik offers APIs for powerful workflow creation and integration with third-party applications, granting users access to vital data such as alerts, inventory, and historical statistics.

BackBox Network Automation Platform

BackBox is a network automation platform designed to simplify and automate network configuration management and operations tasks for devices from over 180 vendors. It is trusted by network engineers and is utilized on more than 100,000 networks worldwide.

Key features of BackBox include point-and-click automation solutions for device backup, instant restore, OS updates and patching, compliance audits and remediation, network vulnerability management, and network configuration changes. The platform provides a library of over 3,000 pre-built automations and a script-free way to build new automations. BackBox is highly scalable, designed to work with both large enterprises and service provider networks.

The BackBox platform supports a diverse range of deployment options, including on-premises, cloud-based, or as a service. It features a RESTful API-first approach built on the OpenAPI platform, catering to enterprise needs. For MSPs, BackBox offers vendor-agnostic, single-pane-of-glass views, secure multi-tenancy, rapid onboarding and discovery, and improved network security.

Cisco Catalyst Center

Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly DNA Center) is a comprehensive network management platform that offers a wide range of features to streamline and enhance IT teams’ visibility into their organizations’ networks. The platform provides a clear overview of the overall health of network devices, clients, and applications, with customizable metrics and suggested remediation for any issues.

Cisco Catalyst Center offers enhanced visibility into endpoints and traffic patterns, as well as granular multilevel segmentation for improved security and flexibility. The platform uses Cisco’s AI Network Analytics’ artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to improve network performance and issue resolution by accurately identifying trends, anomalies, and root causes. This advanced analytics minimizes noise and false positives, allowing network administrators to work more efficiently.

The platform offers integrations with solutions like ServiceNow, Apple iOS, Samsung, Intel devices, and Cisco Umbrella, to provide seamless management across multiple platforms and offer direct communication with networks devices for more efficient troubleshooting. With Cisco Catalyst Center’s wide range of features and integration capabilities, businesses can achieve a more efficient and effective approach to network management.

Fortinet FortiManager

Fortinet FortiManager is a network management solution designed to provide consistent protection across complex hybrid environments. Its key features include accelerated zero-touch provisioning through best-practice templates, as well as streamlined workflows between the Fortinet Security Fabric and over 500 ecosystem partners.

FortiManager offers a “single pane of glass” management console that delivers network insights covering connectivity, resource utilization, device settings, policy status, and alerts. It effectively orchestrates various FortiOS-based networking devices, such as FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiAP, and FortiExtender, ensuring consistent enforcement of unified security policies throughout an organization’s network. FortiManager supports up to 100,000 Fortinet devices, including FortiGates, FortiSwitches, FortiAPs, SD-WAN, and FortiSASE.

FortiManager simplifies provisioning, reducing time-to-deployment for branch offices and campuses, and provides enterprise-grade high availability with automatic database backups for disaster recovery. Security automation is achieved via REST API, scripts, connectors, and automation stitches, and the platform is designed with enterprise-ready integrations for partner products such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, ServiceNow, and Tufin,. Finally, administrative domains (ADOMs) enable separation of customer data and efficient management of domains for compliance and operational efficiency, making the platform suitable for MSPs as well as enterprises.

HPE Aruba AirWave

HPE Aruba AirWave is a network management system designed for wired, wireless, and remote connectivity. It supports features such as zero-touch provisioning, client visibility, traffic analysis, reporting, and multivendor integration.

Aruba AirWave simplifies device configuration with configuration groups, assigned templates, and step-by-step workflows. It also supports zero-touch provisioning for automatic deployment. The system provides real-time visibility and control through health and analytics dashboards, including network health, traffic analysis, and unified communications and collaboration (UCC) analytics. Additionally, Aruba Airwave offers role-based access, discovery, topology mapping, stage-based connectivity health, VisualRF for Wi-Fi visibility and management, RAPIDS for intrusion detection, and firmware upgrade and compliance features.

Aruba AirWave is compatible with both Aruba and third-party network devices and can be deployed as a hardware or virtual machine image.

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is designed to provide network observability for NetOps teams to identify and address network performance issues in hybrid environments. It aims to boost network performance and improve user application experiences by proactively monitoring multi-vendor networks across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider settings.

Key features of IBM SevOne NPM include automated network observability, next-gen infrastructure monitoring, flow analysis for improved troubleshooting, ITOps and AIOps integration, dynamic capacity planning, simple troubleshooting workflows, and comprehensive data collection from multi-vendor, physical, virtual, and software-defined infrastructure. The solution offers advanced analytics with machine learning, intelligent alerts for proactive incident management, enhanced visualization tools, and scalability to monitor networks of any size without dropping data.

IBM SevOne NPM improves network performance and user experiences while enabling greater productivity and efficiency across IT teams. With its robust feature set and integration capabilities, this solution supports businesses as they scale and adapts to evolving networking and connectivity requirements.

ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive network monitoring software offering in-depth visibility into the performance of network devices, including routers, switches, firewalls, servers, VMs, and storage devices. With this easy-to-use and affordable solution, businesses can effectively identify and troubleshoot the root cause of issues affecting their networks.

OpManager’s monitors IP-based devices in real-time, ensuring a clear view of device health, availability, and performance. It also monitors both physical and virtual servers and users can access detailed statistics on wireless networks, including access points, routers, switches, and WiFi systems, as well as monitor WAN connections using Cisco IPSLA technology. OpManager also offers storage monitoring features, such as capacity utilization monitors and storage growth trend graphs.

The OpManager platform supports businesses with distributed networks by providing network visibility across multiple locations with probe-specific controls. Network visualization is enhanced through Layer2 Maps, virtual topology maps, Business Views, and 3D floor and rack views for data centers. Lastly, OpManager streamlines fault management by presenting meaningful, color-coded, and severity-based alarms to operators for efficient and effective issue resolution.

Paessler PRTG

Paessler PRTG is a network management software that monitors, maintains, and provisions computer networks. It enables teams to track network bandwidth, availability, performance, and hardware through various monitoring functionalities. These capabilities include bandwidth monitoring to see network traffic sources, availability monitoring to ensure devices can be reached, and performance and load monitoring to check network speed, CPU usage, RAM load, and other critical system parameters.

Paessler PRTG detects system failures and router slowdowns, automatically notifying the administrator about the status of these devices. It also monitors server and website availability, sending error alerts through email, network broadcasts, text logs, or SMS. The platform also tracks systems’ up and downtimes, enabling swift detection of faults or slowdowns.

To assure optimal network and server performance, Paessler PRTG provides usage and bandwidth monitoring based on multiple parameters such as IP addresses, port numbers, and protocols. This monitoring can be performed using SNMP, Packet Sniffing, or NetFlow (for specific Cisco devices). The software also allows administrators to view actual bandwidth usage and record monitoring data, enabling the creation of an activity diagram that displays all network usage parameters.

Paessler PRTG offers extensive performance and fault management for networks and servers. It monitors networks for technical problems caused by overloaded servers, crashed connections, or users, helping to control network usage, server capacity, and availability.

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper

SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper (NTM) is a network mapping software designed to automatically plot and maintain a record of an organization’s network. The software uses various methods, including ICMP, SNMP, WMI, CDP, VMware, and Microsoft Hyper-V, for device discovery and multi-level network mapping. It provides an integrated OSI Layer 2 and Layer 3 network map with detailed device information, allowing businesses to save time and resources by eliminating repetitive scanning processes.

One of the key features of NTM is its ability to auto-detect changes to network topology, ensuring an up-to-date network map. The platform can create multiple maps and segmentation diagrams from a single scan. Users can efficiently manage network inventory, perform hardware asset tracking, and automate report creation within the software.

To further streamline operations, SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper allows users to export network diagrams to Visio, PDF, and PNG formats. This feature also populates Visio SmartShapes with network discovery data, saving time on documentation.

NTM can also assist companies in meeting compliance requirements for standards such as PCI, SOX, HIPAA, and FIPS 140-2, by maintaining an up-to-date network diagram and offering FIPS 140-2 compliance.

Zabbix

Zabbix is a comprehensive network monitoring solution designed to provide IT managers with real-time information on network traffic metrics and device performance. It achieves this by utilizing SNMP metrics or by deploying a Zabbix agent, enabling compatibility with a wide range of network devices. Zabbix tracks various network parameters such as incoming and outgoing traffic, bandwidth usage, packet loss, interface error rates, and TCP connections, among other metrics.

A standout feature of Zabbix is its robust alerting system, which allows users to define flexible problem thresholds and receive notifications when issues arise within their network infrastructure. Zabbix can aggregate collected data across various timeframes, allowing IT managers to identify long-term trends and calculate values such as average traffic or error rates. Additionally, Zabbix offers resource discovery features for seamless device onboarding and offboarding, as well as automatic detection of added, removed, or changed resources.

With its advanced data collection and analysis capabilities, Zabbix serves as a valuable tool for maintaining consistent and accurate network performance data, improving efficiencies and providing comprehensive network management functionality.

Everything You Need To Know About Network Management Solutions (FAQs)

What Is Network Management?

Network management refers to the tasks that IT administrators must perform to maintain, optimize, and secure their organizations’ networks. This includes:

Performance management: Monitoring performance KPIs across various network components to help ensure uptime, boost availability, and improve bandwidth speeds
Security management: Monitoring the network for security issues by analyzing activity and event logs for indicators of compromise
Fault management: Identifying and resolving network faults to minimize downtime, and logging information on any discovered faults both for auditing purposes and to help aid future remediation efforts
Configuration management: Monitoring the configurations within the network to ensure they’re optimized for data flow and traffic demands
Utilization management: Monitoring employee usage of network resources to help identify anomalous activity that could indicate a compromise or disruption, and ensure budget is being allocated correctly to minimize enterprise costs

Completing all these tasks manually can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, particularly for IT teams managing large or geographically distributed networks, or MSPs managing the networks of multiple clients. Because of this, many IT teams utilize network management systems (NMSs) to help them perform these tasks more effectively and efficiently.

How Do Network Management Solutions Work?

Network management systems create a topology map of all the assets that make up an organization’s network, then continuously monitor those assets in real-time and present the data they collect in a single, central management console. From the management console, IT admins can easily and remotely access that data and use it to allocate resources, govern security and compliance policies, troubleshoot performance issues, and identify and respond to abnormal activity that could indicate a breach or other disruption. IT admins can also use network management software to automate repetitive tasks such as software upgrades and configuration management, saving their time and resource so that it can be spent on more complex issues.

Network management software uses a protocol to collect data about network devices and components, such as switches, routers, access points, and end-user devices (e.g., desktops, laptops and cell phones). This data might include their availability, latency, performance, and data/packet loss across the network. Protocols can also be used to carry out software updates and automate configuration management. Some commonly used network management protocols include:

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP): An agentless, open standard protocol that collects data from network components and sends it back to the system for analysis
Streaming telemetry: Software agents installed in each network device to collects KPIs from those devices, then transmits them to the system in real-time
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP): Discovers link-layer addresses so that they can be associated with an internet-layer address
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP): Used by network devices for troubleshooting, to send IP operational information, and to send error messages

The network management system then presents the information collected via its protocol in a series of accessible, intuitive, and customizable reports within the system’s centralized management console. Admins can then use that data to identify and remediate any network issues.

What Features Should You Look For In A Network Management Solution?

There are a few key features that you should look out for when choosing a network management solution. These include:

Automatic device discovery and topology mapping: Your chosen solution should automatically detect new devices and assets added to the network, including their vendor, capabilities, and performance characteristics, to help you identify any unauthorized or shadow devices. It should then create a topology map of all those assets, so you can see visually how all the elements are interconnected and get a better idea of their dependencies.
Real-time reporting and analytics: The best network management systems offer a variety of out-of-the-box and custom reports that can help you identify current issues in real-time, analyze historical trends, and predict future issues, growth, and usage metrics.
A central management console: Your IT team should be able to remotely access reporting dashboards and troubleshooting features, such as accessing and rebooting devices, and managing configuration changes.
Automated, customizable alerts: You should be able to configure the alerts you receive to help eliminate alert fatigue and make sure your team are notified of the changes most critical to your business. The best solutions integrate with ticketing systems to help IT personnel respond to alerts more efficiently.
Critical infrastructure monitoring: Your network management tool should monitor all critical infrastructure devices—such as switches, servers, routers, load balancers, firewalls, and any IP-connected devices—are online, available, and performing as expected. The best solutions offer suggestions on how to optimize your critical infrastructure.
Automated configuration management: Your solution should automatically manage configurations to keep up with changing data flows and traffic, and to eliminate configuration drift.
Change control and auditing: All network management systems should carry out any network changes in a controlled manner and within compliance with regulatory standards. To achieve this, your solution should create logs or audit trails of all activity carried out within the system.

Caitlin Jones

Deputy Head Of Content

Caitlin Jones is Deputy Head of Content at Expert Insights. Caitlin is an experienced writer and journalist, with years of experience producing award-winning technical training materials and journalistic content. Caitlin holds a First Class BA in English Literature and German, and provides our content team with strategic editorial guidance as well as carrying out detailed research to create articles that are accurate, engaging and relevant. Caitlin co-hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, where she interviews world-leading B2B tech experts.

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.