The Top 20 Free Network Monitoring Analysis Tools for Sys Admins. Microsoft Network Monitor. When you launch Advanced IP Scanner, start by going to Settings Options to select which resources to scan and how fast/accurate you want the results to be. You can then choose which subnet to scan and proceed with pressing the “Scan” button. A new window will appear. Select your Wi-Fi adapter, and then click properties. Click “Scanning Options” to put the Wi-Fi card in Monitor Mode. Put a check next to “Switch to Monitor Mode” and then select the Wi-Fi channels and time you would like Microsoft Monitor to spend on each channel.
Logging in
The network monitor is not connected to the Spiceworks IT Desktop application at all, so just because you have an account set up there doesn’t mean you can use it to log in to the network monitor. Only the person who downloaded and installed the network monitor is going to be able to access it initially, using their Spiceworks Community login info.
Adding new devices
If you’re used to running Spiceworks you’ve probably set up a network scan. Well, forget all that. Here, we’re not trying to discover the devices on your network. We’re operating under the assumption that you know what your important devices are.
Just click the Add Server or Add Switch buttons to bring up the “add device” window.
Now you just need to enter the IP address or hostname of the device and provide the credentials to login.
The network monitor will only be able to scan devices it can communicate with via SNMP v1 or v2. v3 is not supported at this time.
Click Add Device to have Spiceworks connect to the device and start monitoring it.
You’ll need to manually enter each device you want to monitor.
Deleting devices
If you’ve added devices, you might need to delete that device at some point, right? Well, it’s pretty easy to do that:
Navigate to the device view of the one you want to remove (whether by clicking its name in your watchlist or clicking the Device tab and selecting it there).
From the Actions dropdown menu, select Remove Device.
Confirm that you do indeed want to delete it. You will lose all records of the device within the Network Monitor.
Configuring your dashboard view
The dashboard will show you small overviews of 10 servers and 10 networking devices, online status of up to 30 devices, as well as a more detailed view of a device of your choice.
Watchlists: The watchlists show you 10 devices and a brief timeline status of a few more important attributes. If you’re monitoring more than 10 servers or networking devices, you can configure which ones show in the list here. Click the gear icon and drag & drop the devices to get them in the order you want. Click on any of the devices in the list to go to its detailed view.
Online Watchlist: This section will let you monitor the online status of a website or device. You’ll see a green light if it’s online and a red one if it is not. Mouse over to see the response time.
Individual device: When you add a device to the individual view you can view 9 graphs of information relevant to this type of device. If you edit this box, you can choose exactly which 9 sensors you think are most important.
Using online watches
No, not talking about smartwatches (unless it has an IP address, in which case you totally can add it!). You can add devices or websites to the online watch section of the dashboard to stay on top of things being on or offline. Just click the Add Device link in the Online Watchlist panel to get started (you’ll need to do this for anything you want to track, even servers/switches you’re already monitoring).
IP/Hostname: You’ll need to enter the IP address or hostname of the device you want to track. I bet you’re glad you read that explanation. But… you might want to know that if you’re going to track a website, you’ll need to enter the IP address of the website rather than the URL. So at least there was something helpful here.
Device Name: This field is optional, but it’ll make things a lot easier for you to keep track of if you’re using IP addresses to set it up. Unless you’re Rain Man.
Check Type: Choose the way you want to determine the online status. Ping should work for anything, but if you want to use another one of the options, make sure your device uses that type of connection. You probably don’t want to check for the online status of a Windows server using SIP; save that for your VOIP devices.
Advanced Settings: You can adjust the poll frequency (how often the online check happens) and the timeout here. You shouldn’t need to adjust these, but if you’re finding devices that you know are online showing up as offline, you might need to adjust the timeout to be a littlelonger. You can check this for yourself in a command prompt or something and determine how long things are actually taking to respond.
Using device view
You can click the Devices tab to get a detailed look at the devices that your Network Monitor is watching. Just search and/or select a device on the left panel and check out everything about it. You’ll see graphs for each of the sensors that the network monitor is checking. For servers, you’ll also see a list of processes and services. Mouse over a process to see the PID number and what user has the process running. If you mouse over a service, you can see a description of what that service does. Select a process or service to start or stop it. If you want to monitor a particular process or service, just drag it into the box at the top of the process/service area. That will let you configure a monitor for it. You can click More Details at the top of the screen to see information like manufacturer, OS, processor, last reboot, etc.
You can also use the device view to specify the alerts the device generates. From the Actions button, select Edit Device Monitors. Now you can go through the list of monitors and select specific thresholds for app notifications and email notifications.
Configuring the alerts/notifications
Out-of-the-box, the Spiceworks Network Monitor is configured to alert you by in-app messages on some things, while emailing you for more critical alerts. But each network is different and you might want to adjust these to your own liking. You can edit these by clicking Settings. From this page, you can use the slider to globally manage the frequency of alerts. Moving the slider to the left will let you know things are getting bad long before it’s an issue (hopefully), resulting in more alerts. Moving the bar to the right will keep alerts from being triggered until things definitely need your attention immediately. You can adjust each monitor individually in regards to whether you are emailed about the alert. You can click the box next to the email icon to switch it from gray to green to indicate that you will be emailed. You’ll notice that on several monitors, the threshold for sending an email is higher than triggering an alert. If you want to create a unique threshold for specific devices, you can do this by selecting the device from the Devices page and clicking Actions → Edit Device Monitors.
Creating maintenance windows
Have you had issues with your network monitor overwhelming you with alert emails when you’re doing maintenance and you know thatdevices are going to be offline? You can schedule mainenance windows for the Network Monitor to suspend emails. The monitors will still be triggered, you just want have your email inbox fill up.
I always learn something new from them.
Just go to Settings → Maintenance Mode to get started. You can use the toggle to turn maintenance mode for all of your devices.Or you can schedule a maintenance window for the future:
Click Create next to “Schedule New Maintenance”.
Give it a name and description to help you keep track, then set when it starts, the duration, how often, and choose which devicesit applies to. Choose the “Specific Devices” option to go through and select each individual device you want included.
Click Save and you’ll see the schedule listed in the Maintenance Schedules window.
Adding new users
You can invite additional users to your Network Monitor installation by navigating to Settings → User Accounts and clicking the Invite New User button. Now you’ll need to provide the user’s name and email. They’ll receive an email from the Spiceworks Community asking them to join your installation. If they do not currently have a Spiceworks Community account, they will need to create one. Otherwise, they will be taken straight to the network monitor to create a password. The user will need to be on your network and able to access the device hosting the network monitor when they accept the email invite. If you do not have the User Accounts option, update your Network Monitor installation to the newest version.
How do I change my email address?
At this point, you’re not able to change your email address within the application. You can add your new email address as a user, and then once joined, delete your old user.
Can I move my installation to a different machine?
There is not a built-in method to do this, currently, but there is a script that is currently in beta. If you would like to try out this method, please follow these instructions:
Download the script by clicking here.
Place the zip file on the C drive of the current Network Monitor server (not in any subfolders) and unzip it.
Run Windows Command Prompt as an administrator and enter cd C:migrator-20151229.
Type export.bat and hit enter.
This will create a new zip file in the C:migrator-20151229 folder. Now take this zip file to the new server and follow the same instructions,but enter import.bat instead of export.
After running the script, you should delete the zip file that was created. The script stores encrypted credentials with the key to unencrypt them. You definitely don’t want that floating around.
Known Issues
There’s a known bug that happens occasionally concerning the Remote Collector being unable to connect to the devices it is monitoring after amigration. The current fix is to edit the credentials after importing and saving. You don’t actually have to change anything.
If you run into any issues with script, please let us know at [email protected].
Related Documentation
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Networking tools for Windows are typically command-line programs or desktop applications. Under Windows 10, there’s a third format: apps that you download from the online Microsoft Store.
Here we’re highlighting 10 networking tools that are available in the Microsoft Store and can be pinned as tile icons on the Windows 10 Start menu for convenient access. They’re all useful, and they’re all free.
All My LAN
All My LAN lists your network's IP address, its profile name, and its maximum upload and download speeds. The amount of data that has been sent and received over the network is depicted in two line charts. By moving a slider, you can adjust the charts to represent the amount of data that was transmitted throughout the current day or up to the last 30 days. The charts can be combined to view as one chart.
This app can also scan for any multicast DNS services or UPnP devices that are connected to your network. Clicking the name of a found device or service pulls up information about it, such as its IP address, manufacturer, and product name and model.
Developer: Thoroughsoft
Data Usage
This app can audit a Windows 10 desktop or laptop and report all the mobile data or Wi-Fi networks it’s been connected to. When you run Data Usage for the first time, it may take a while – anywhere from several seconds to a minute or so – as it scours your computer for its record of network connections.
Data Usage presents the amount of data that the computer has consumed on networks as line and pie charts. The line chart tallies the total amount of data for each network your computer connected to over the current month. (This can be changed to show the previous month, the last 7 days or a range between two days you select.) The pie chart breaks down by percentage how much data was used on each network over the selected range of dates. Reports can be exported as CSV files, which break down the amount of data that was used by day.
Data Usage is free but comes with banner ads. The pro version ($1.49) removes them.
Developer: smart_Apps
Network Inspector
This app is comprised of tools that scan information about nearby network signals, including Wi-Fi ones, but its purpose has an emphasis on Bluetooth. When its Bluetooth Watcher tool is activated, Network Inspector continuously updates a list of Bluetooth devices that are within range. The app has a search box you can use to find a Bluetooth device that’s transmitting by entering its device ID into it.
Another tool, an HTTP inspector, scans for and lists any HTTP servers on the local subnet of the network on which your Windows 10 computer runs. You can view the pages that are found, and other information about them, such as their headers.
The developer has made the Network Inspector source available, which can be examined within the app itself. Network Inspector is free but comes with banner ads. To remove them, you’ll have to pay $20. But the price includes full access to the app’s source code for you to use and modify.
Developer: Shipwreck Software
Network Port Scanner
Network Port Scanner is a standard port scanner for checking your network for any ports that are open and revealing the IP addresses they are open to. You can enter a range of IPs and ports for this app to scan, as well as setting a timeout in milliseconds.
Developer: Cenix
Termius
Termius is a full SSH client that lets you connect multiple times to a host, or multitask by connecting to several hosts at once and switching among them. It supports port-forwarding. You can organize your servers under group categories, and pair credentials and servers for quicker access.
You can customize the UI of your sessions by choosing from several color themes and resizable