The Top 10 LAN Monitoring Software Solutions
Discover the top LAN monitoring software solutions. Explore features such as network visualization, continuous monitoring, alerting, and reporting.
Written by Caitlin Harris
Technical Review by Laura Iannini
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1.
Atera
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2.
Dynatrace
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3.
ManageEngine OPManager
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4.
Nagios XI
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5.
Paessler PRTG
LAN monitors are software applications that scan Local Area Networks (LANs) and deliver insights into all of the assets within that LAN. They give IT teams a visual overview of all their network assets and the relationships between those assets. They can assess and monitor each asset’s health and performance in real-time, alerting admins to any operational issues that could cause downtime, or suspicious activity that could indicate the network has been breached.
Although LANs are limited to covering a small area, they can still be very complex; they can comprise hundreds or even thousands of devices, and can be distributed across multiple locations. Because of this, monitoring each asset within a LAN manually—from user endpoints, to IoT devices, to routers, switches, and servers—can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. A LAN monitoring tool automates the most complex parts of that process, collecting and assessing your LAN data, then automatically alerting you to any changes so you can focus on remediation.
In this article, we’ll explore the top LAN monitoring software solutions. These include features such as network scanning and visualization, continuous monitoring, real-time alerting, and customizable reporting. We’ll give you some background information on the provider and the key features of each solution, as well as the type of customer that they are best suited for.
Atera
Atera is a leading provider of IT management tools. Their cloud-based platform offers network discovery and monitoring, remote IT management, Professional Services Automation (PSA), patch management, and help desk services. When it comes to LAN monitoring, Atera continuously scans all network assets for unauthorized devices and vulnerabilities. The platform features lots of automation, including the ability to alert admins to network incidents, and automating IT maintenance or administrative tasks such as scans and patching. All data can be accessed via a central management console, from which admins can view real-time reports and activity logs.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Atera offers lots of functionality alongside LAN monitoring, enabling IT teams to efficiently respond to any issues detected across their networks. All features are accessible remotely via the platform’s central, intuitive management console. It’s important to note that network monitoring is only available in Atera’s Expert and Master packages. As such, we recommend Atera for mid-sized and larger organizations looking to unify their network monitoring, management, and troubleshooting processes. Its multi-tenancy also makes Atera suitable for MSPs.
Pricing:
- Professional: $149/month/technician
- Expert: $169/month/technician
- Master: $199/month/technician
- Enterprise: Pricing is available from Atera on request
Atera
Dynatrace
Dynatrace provides observability, security, and AIOps solutions for cloud environments, via a single platform. Dynatrace monitors the network at the host and process level, visualizing all process-to-process communications with real-time topology maps that highlight bandwidth use and connection issues. These also outline asset dependencies and suggest how any issues may impact end users, thereby helping to prioritize remediation efforts. Dynatrace will automatically identify and flag changes within the network, including the addition of new machines or interfaces. The platform will show health and performance metrics for all network assets—all of which admins can view via a single, central interface.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Dynatrace’s process-level monitoring provides admins with a granular level of detail regarding connection health and performance. It effectively visualizes these metrics with great clarity, making it much easier to identify, understand, and remediate issues. The platform offers plenty of out-of-the-box monitoring functionality that makes it relatively straightforward to implement, whilst retaining the ability to be fine-tuned to detect issues across complex heterogeneous environments. We recommend this solution to larger enterprises looking to monitor and remediate network connection issues across their LAN.
Pricing:
- Full stack monitoring: $74/month
- Infrastructure monitoring: £22/month
- Digital experience monitoring: $11/month
- Application security: $15/month
- Open ingestion: $25/month
- Cloud automation: $0.10/unit
Dynatrace
ManageEngine OPManager
ManageEngine is a market-leading provider of IT management software for enterprises and MSPs. OpManager is their network monitoring and management solution. The platform uses remote probes with individual controls to monitor distributed networks, and offers 24/7 monitoring for Hyper-V, VMWare, Citrix, Xen, and Nutanix HCI servers. The platform visualizes the network using topography maps, and generates real-time health, performance, and availability reports on all IP-based devices connected to the network. This helps IT teams to quickly identify and troubleshoot connectivity issues and vulnerabilities.
Expert Insights’ Comments: ManageEngine’s OpManager offers a range of troubleshooting and remediation options alongside its core network monitoring features. The platform’s intuitive, visual interface makes it easy to manage. Overall, we recommend OpManager as a strong LAN monitoring solution for mid-size and large enterprises looking to monitor the health and performance of their own networks and devices. ManageEngine also offers an MSP version of OpManager, which offers multi-tenant support, and customer dashboards and grouping.
Pricing:
- Standard: $245/10 devices
- Professional: $345/10 devices
- Enterprise: $11,545/250 devices
ManageEngine OPManager
Nagios XI
Nagios is a provider of monitoring software for critical IT infrastructure. Nagios XI, their network and server monitoring tool, automatically discovers network assets and presents monitoring data in a series of visual graphs, charts, and dials in the platform’s reporting dashboard, which make it easy for admins to identify performance issues at-a-glance. The platform also offers advanced user management, with role-based permissions for added security.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Nagios XI is a user-friendly LAN monitor for mid-size businesses. Its configuration wizard and auto-discovery features make it relatively easy to set up, and ongoing management is straightforward via the intuitive dashboard. Organizations with a limited budget for network monitoring, that are willing to compromise on the interface, may wish to consider Nagios Core, the free, open-source version of Nagios XI. Core can only be used to monitor seven nodes and offers a very limited web interface. However, upgrading from Core to XI only requires a software install, so smaller companies that are planning on scaling soon may wish to consider this. Both versions were developed for Linux environments, but can be run in Windows via VMWare, Hyper-V, or Docker.
Pricing:
- Nagios Core: free
- Standard: $1,995
- Enterprise: $3,495
Nagios XI
Paessler PRTG
Paessler is a software provider that offers a range of IT and IoT monitoring solutions. PRTG is their infrastructure monitoring tool for Windows environments. PRTG monitors the entire network—including traffic, systems, devices, and apps—and visualizes it using real-time topography mapping to give admins the live status of all network assets. It alerts admins to any anomalous metrics or issues via customizable email, push, and HTTP request notifications. Admins are then able to dig deeper into this data via customizable reporting templates.
Expert Insights’ Comments: PRTG is a flexible network monitoring tool that offers on-prem, cloud, and hosted deployment options. The platform supports local and distributed networks and allows admins to manage the solution via a central web interface, desktop app, or mobile app for iOS or Android. The platform is also flexible in its pricing options, which makes it suitable for organizations of all sizes looking for comprehensive LAN monitoring solution.
Pricing:
- PRTG freeware version: free (up to 100 sensors)
- PRTG Network Monitor: €1,649/license
- PRTG Enterprise Monitor: €15,249/year
- PRTG Hosted Monitor: €159/month
Paessler PRTG
Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS is a monitoring and observability platform that offers network monitoring, configuration management, and address management. Pandora FMS automatically scans the network and maps all networks assets in a topography graphic—one of the many reporting graphs that can be accessed via the fully customizable management interface. Dashboards can be customized by each user, linked to create custom drilldowns, and shared externally. The platform continuously probes and monitors the network to keep track of device health and performance updates. It delivers real-time alerts on any critical issues for fast, effective remediation.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Pandora FMS is a very flexible network monitor, in terms of customization, pricing, compatibility with different infrastructures (Windows, Android, Linux, Unix, IBM-I, and Mainframe), and deployment (on-prem or as-a-Service). We recommend Pandora FMS for any sized organization or MSP with a focus on customization, or that wants to be able to use their network monitor to fine-tune their network configurations.
Pricing:
- NMS: €18/agent
- Enterprise: custom
- MaaS Basic: €3/agent/month
- MaaS Standard: €4/agent/month
- MaaS Advanced: €5.50/agent/month
Pandora FMS
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds is a market-leading IT software provider that offers a comprehensive suite of cybersecurity, IT service management, and observability solutions. Network Performance Monitor is their network monitoring and management solution that assesses the availability and performance of on-prem and cloud environments. Network Performance Monitor automatically detects all devices on the network and maps their dependencies. The solution provides path analysis that highlights all devices, apps, vendors, and networks to help isolate performance or availability issues. The platform also offers alerting on admin-configured trigger conditions for faster remediation.
Expert Insights’ Comments: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is an easy-to-use network monitoring tool that streamlines the process of identifying and remediating accessibility and performance issues with at-a-glance reports and visual topography maps. We recommend SolarWinds’ solution as a strong LAN monitor for mid-size to large enterprises that specifically want to monitor network performance.
Pricing:
- Pricing starts at £1,354, with subscription and perpetual options available
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
WhatsUp Gold
Progress Software offers a wide range of software that enables businesses to build and maintain an optimized, secure infrastructure. WhatsUp Gold is their network monitoring and management software. This solution identifies all network devices across on-prem and cloud environments, using topology mapping to visualize the relationships and dependencies between each asset. It also monitors application performance, response times, and bandwidth usage. From the management console, admins can configure real-time alerts and access device-level reports for quicker incident response. It can also filter, search, and alert on syslogs or Windows logs. The platform offers automated configuration backups for fast restoration in the event a device fails.
Expert Insights’ Comments: WhatsUp Gold is a highly visual LAN monitoring solution. Its management interface is easy to navigate, while its reporting dashboards are graphical, making it easy for admins to identify issues at-a-glance. We recommend WhatsUp Gold for mid-sized organizations looking for a LAN monitor that will enable them to map their network asset relationships and dependencies (including devices and app) for clearer identification and remediation of issues.
Pricing:
- Free: annual/perpetual license (point-based)
- Premium: annual/perpetual license (device-based)
- Total Plus: perpetual license (point-based)
WhatsUp Gold
Zabbix
Zabbix is a completely free, open-source network, server, and device monitoring platform. It offers support for on-prem, cloud, and distributed networks. Zabbix automatically discovers new network devices and monitors the network against a range of out-of-the-box metrics, including performance, health, and configuration changes. Admins can customize performance metrics with custom scripts or build new templates from scratch. Zabbix also offers templates for device monitoring on popular devices such as Cisco and Dell endpoints, with pre-configured triggers, graphs, screens, and discovery rules. For added security, Zabbix supports LDAP authentication and encrypts all monitoring traffic between itself and network devices.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Zabbix is a comprehensive network monitor that offers lots of out-of-the-box functionality, making it easy to set up and manage. Alongside their network monitoring software, Zabbix offers professional training, technical support, and consultancy services, all of which are designed to help businesses get the most out of the tool. As such, we recommend Zabbix to SMBs looking for an easy-to-manage, yet secure LAN monitor that will help them identify and remediate network health and performance issues.
Pricing:
- Zabbix is free for commercial and non-commercial use
Zabbix
Zenoss
Zenoss is an IT operations management provider that helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their infrastructure and applications. Zenoss Cloud, their full-stack infrastructure and network monitor, discovers all virtual and physical network assets, including new devices, and continuously monitors them to provide real-time visibility into their health and performance. The platform consolidates and deduplicates network event data in context with device and component events for a unified, streamlined view. All metrics—including topography maps, performance metrics, and critical activity— are presented in one intuitive dashboard. As well as displaying real-time information, Zenoss Cloud uses service models and machine learning to predict future outages for proactive, streamlined remediation.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Zenoss Cloud is a comprehensive, flexible network monitor that supports both LAN and WAN multi-site networks—admins need only install data collectors on each site. The platform is easy to manage via its web-based console, which enables admins to access network data from anywhere, on any device. We recommend Zenoss Cloud to mid-market organizations and larger enterprises that want to be able to monitor a multi-site LAN remotely—and particularly those that are keen to take a proactive approach to security.
Pricing:
- Pricing is available from Zenoss upon request
Zenoss
FAQs
What Is A Local Area Network (LAN)?
A local area network, more commonly known as a “LAN”, is a group of computers within a limited physical location that share the same internet connection. A LAN can be made up of virtually anything that connects to the internet: desktops, laptops, mobile devices, IoT devices, cables, routers, and switches among other devices. It can be as small as one user connecting to a home network, or as huge as an enterprise such as an office or a university, with thousands of connected computers.
Because devices that are part of the same LAN share an internet connection, they can easily share files with one another, connect to the same IoT devices (such as printers), and be used to remotely access one another (e.g., an IT helpdesk remotely accessing a user’s computer to troubleshoot it).
What Are The Different Types Of LAN?
There are two types of LAN: client/server LANs, and peer-to-peer LANs:
- Client/server LANs are made up of a group of computers (“clients”) connected to a single central server. A client is any device that can access the internet or company applications. It will connect to the server via a cable (e.g., ethernet) or via a wireless connection (e.g., Wi-Fi). Usually, the server stores databases and applications, which the user can access through a client device connected to that server. The server is maintained by an IT admin, who also governs processes such as network traffic, device access, application access, and file storage. Client/server LANs are usually used by businesses.
- Peer-to-peer LANs don’t have a central server—the devices (here called “peers”) simply connect to one another, sharing data through wired or wireless connections to a switch or router. Peer-to-peer LANs are typically smaller than client/server LANs because their lack of a central server means they can’t cope with heavy workloads. Peer-to-peer LANs are usually used by home networks, and some small businesses.
What Is A LAN Monitor?
A LAN monitor is a software application that gives IT admins complete visibility into all the devices connected to their LAN, including servers, user endpoints, IoT devices, routers, and so on. It scans the network to create an inventory of all the assets connected to it, usually creating a visual representation of the network called a “topography map” that shows admins what’s on their network and how those assets are interconnected.
The LAN monitor then continuously assesses each asset to make sure they’re all working as they should, and alerts admins in real-time to any operational issues or suspicious activity (such as a connection from a new, unknown device, or a large increase in traffic from a device). This enables admins to remediate performance problems before they impact their users, as well as identify and investigate any potential malicious activity on their LAN.
What Are The Benefits Of LAN Monitoring?
There are four main benefits of using a LAN monitoring tool:
- Gain insights into network operations. A LAN monitor delivers detailed insights into the health and performance status of all the assets within your network. If you have a complex LAN—such as a client/server LAN comprising hundreds or even thousands of clients, or a distributed LAN that operates across multiple locations—it can be especially difficult and time-consuming to monitor each asset manually. A LAN monitor automates this and presents its findings graphically, so it’s easier to understand, and in a central management console, so it’s easier to access.
- Proactively improve network performance. LAN monitors offer automated and customizable alerts, which notify you in real-time of any health or performance changes across your LAN. This means you can quickly remediate any issues as soon as they’re detected, to minimize the impact on your end users. Some LAN monitors also use machine learning to predict bandwidth usage or future congestion, downtime, or outages, so that you can proactively solve those issues before they occur and keep your network running seamlessly.
- Identify and remediate malicious activity. By visualizing your data, the LAN monitor makes it easier for you to spot any anomalies across your network. By alerting you to any changes in real-time, you are able to quickly investigate any suspicious activity that could indicate your LAN has been breached.
- Identify and justify the need for equipment upgrades. LAN monitors deliver insights into the health and performance of your network assets. If you track this data over time, you can see which systems are consistently underperforming and need upgrading. By providing detailed logs of this data, a LAN monitor makes it easier for you to justify the cost of an upgrade.
What Features Should You Look For In A LAN Monitor?
No two networks are the same, and no two network monitors are the same. LAN monitors all offer a slightly different feature set to cater to different requirements; however, there are some features that every LAN monitoring tool should offer. Here are the top features to look for in a LAN monitor:
- Compatibility with all the assets that make up your LAN, if you buy a LAN monitor that doesn’t monitor your entire LAN, you’ll be left with visibility gaps and a false sense of security.
- Automatic network scanning and visualization, to provide you with an immediate, at-a-glance overview of your entire LAN.
- Continuous monitoring, to ensure that you’re able to respond to changes and incidents as soon as they occur to minimize performance downtime and the impact of malicious behavior.
- Real-time alerting on any changes, failures, points of stress, or anomalous activity.
- Customization of alerts and reports, so that you can fine-tune the solution to the issues that are most important to your business.
- Ease of deployment, so that you can get it running—and running effectively—as quickly as possible. If you’re considering a LAN monitor with a more complex deployment process, you should make sure that your IT team are equipped to deal with that, or that the vendor offers robust onboarding and deployment support.
Written By
Caitlin Harris 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.
Technical Review
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.