Network Monitoring, reporting and charting

Pff… if you ever want to give yourself a headache – try setting up your own network monitoring/reporting/charting stuff. First off, finding anything that runs on Win32 is a challenge – and if you can find a freeware version, you almost found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow so to speak.

Now sure you can use for example PRTG Network Monitor (freeware version is limited to 10 sensors, available at: http://www.paessler.com/prtg) or The Dude (available at http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude.php) but well… you still miss out a bit.

So far I haven’t really found my end-all solution that does everything that I want, which is SNMP monitoring, Syslog, and PING-ing. Now keep in mind that I have a fairly simple network. (2 routers set up as access points, 3 wifi-networks, 2 Ethernet over Power Adapters, 1 security device, 2 PC’s, 1 server, 2 notebooks, and 1 network-disk) so it shouldn’t be too hard.

For the time being I am using Kiwi Syslog Daemon (available at http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-syslog-daemon-overview/) for Syslog functionality – and PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring / PING.

Let’s hope I find something a bit more workable in the future. Untill then, if you are looking for a simple and free solution, you got 2 that you can use

Both are a breeze to setup and configure and well, they do work. Tips, comments and/or suggestions? Let me know!