Best free network monitor tool

[sumo11]

Hi

I have read about all the different monitoring tools from this site but is there a particular tool that stand out from the rest and is highly accurate? I have used iperf and jperf before using the Bullet M5 wireless devices from ubiquiti, and I have tweaked the window size and buffer size. But I am not sure how accurate the results are.

Any suggestions?

 

[stevech]

Network performance vs. network monitoring...
An easy to use performance check, freeware, is Qcheck.
http://www.ixchariot.com/products/datasheets/qcheck.html

But you can easily get incorrect results with all such tools if you misconfigure or misuse them, e.g., PC's IP stack configured wrong, incorrect use of UDP flow control, etc.

Free Network Monitoring: I like this suite:
http://www.packettrap.com/download/download.aspx?file=Tool_Suite&pid=pro&src=ptws-down

Among others.

 

[claykin]

Network performance vs. network monitoring...
An easy to use performance check, freeware, is Qcheck.
http://www.ixchariot.com/products/datasheets/qcheck.html

But you can easily get incorrect results with all such tools if you misconfigure or misuse them, e.g., PC's IP stack configured wrong, incorrect use of UDP flow control, etc.

Free Network Monitoring: I like this suite:
http://www.packettrap.com/download/download.aspx?file=Tool_Suite&pid=pro&src=ptws-down

Among others.

stevech

Have you tried Capsa Free? Yes its limited to 50 IPs but you can increase that using their referral program.

 

[stevech]

Capsa ? No, new one to me.
Kind of like WireShark?

These are wired LAN 802.3 ethernet test tools, and we're chatting here in the Wireless section!

 

[claykin]

Capsa is full network monitoring.

http://www.colasoft.com/capsa/capsa-free-edition.php

Than again, I clicked through the second link you provided and came up with this free suite. Maybe worth testing. http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/sl360/

 

[GregN]

Network performance vs. network monitoring...
An easy to use performance check, freeware, is Qcheck.
http://www.ixchariot.com/products/datasheets/qcheck.html

But you can easily get incorrect results with all such tools if you misconfigure or misuse them, e.g., PC's IP stack configured wrong, incorrect use of UDP flow control, etc.

Free Network Monitoring: I like this suite:
http://www.packettrap.com/download/download.aspx?file=Tool_Suite&pid=pro&src=ptws-down

Among others.

I'll second PacketTraps pt360, I use it for testing and logging, without an issue.

 

[stevech]

Capsa is full network monitoring.

http://www.colasoft.com/capsa/capsa-free-edition.php

Than again, I clicked through the second link you provided and came up with this free suite. Maybe worth testing. http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/sl360/

I was referring to pt360. Not sure what sl360 is - maybe rebranded?

 

[sumo11]

Thanks for the responses. I will have a look at these. So no one suggests using iperf or jperf?

 

[sumo11]

Additional notes:

I am mostly looking at achievable throughputs at various distances, jitter, packet loss etc. Mostly on the performances of a link which I am creating between two to three nodes at several miles. I am using the bullets as the links and wanted to find out how the links are performing. I will be mostly transferring data between the nodes.

Is there other performance measures that I should consider besides throughput, jitter, packet loss?

 

[stevech]

Thanks for the responses. I will have a look at these. So no one suggests using iperf or jperf?

iPerf - I've used it. It's clunky old code from a University lab. Very error prone.
Haven't used jPerf.

 

[GregN]

iPerf - I've used it. It's clunky old code from a University lab. Very error prone.
Haven't used jPerf.

JPerf is a java gui on top of iperf. Iperf's settings can change your performance measure dramatically, it is dodgey that way.

For performance, I can recommend NASPT from Intel, and not only for NAS performance but overall net file I/O.

With performance tools the question is, what can you compare against - and does the tool have a way of helping identify problems? NASPT is used here, and comes with a analysis package.

PFsense has iperf as a package, makes it easy to measure router performance.

 

[sumo11]

JPerf is a java gui on top of iperf. Iperf's settings can change your performance measure dramatically, it is dodgey that way.

For performance, I can recommend NASPT from Intel, and not only for NAS performance but overall net file I/O.

With performance tools the question is, what can you compare against - and does the tool have a way of helping identify problems? NASPT is used here, and comes with a analysis package.

PFsense has iperf as a package, makes it easy to measure router performance.

Hi GregN

I had a look at NASPT and seems great with a lot of various reports but I wanted to find out how to test the performance of my wireless connection to another PC. I tried pointing either the target directory or the output directory to one of the shared files on the other PC, it's not an option under the configurations-browse. Am I going about it the wrong way?

The wireless connection is two Ubiquiti bullet m5 devices pointing at each other. I have used iperf to run tests already but I want to find out if there will be any performance difference if I used NASPT.

 

[GregN]

Hi GregN

I had a look at NASPT and seems great with a lot of various reports but I wanted to find out how to test the performance of my wireless connection to another PC. I tried pointing either the target directory or the output directory to one of the shared files on the other PC, it's not an option under the configurations-browse. Am I going about it the wrong way?

The wireless connection is two Ubiquiti bullet m5 devices pointing at each other. I have used iperf to run tests already but I want to find out if there will be any performance difference if I used NASPT.

NASPT will work against any mounted drive, map a shared folder from the target machine as a drive letter and try again.

Hope that helps

 

[stevech]

Hi GregN

I had a look at NASPT and seems great with a lot of various reports but I wanted to find out how to test the performance of my wireless connection to another PC

Perhaps you want to remove disk I/O from the equation and test just WiFi speeds. A simple way is to download/install Qcheck which does memory to memory transfers.

 

[GregN]

Perhaps you want to remove disk I/O from the equation and test just WiFi speeds. A simple way is to download/install Qcheck which does memory to memory transfers.

Both I think are useful, you do get an analysis tool with NASPT, and it attempts to give you "real world" figures, most home net activity is file / stored stream centric.

 

[teknojnky]

for anyone that wants a simple network bandwidth app, try netmeter

 

[sumo11]

Thanks, I will also have a look at Qcheck.

 

[spooony]

Networx
Netmeter
F-secure web trail
Network lights
Urlsnooper
ProcNetMonitor
Pandora FMS
Kismet
Network Monitor II
PRTG Network Monitor
Network Activity Indicator
NetWitness Investigator

Network traffic analyzing:
Wireshark
NetworkMiner
Nmap
Cain & Abel
IP Tools
Microsoft Network Monitor
Analyzer
Smartsniff
Capsa Free Network Analyzer
Angry IP Scanner
SoftPerfect Network Scanner
Advanced IP Scanner
RawCap

 

[stevech]

Anyone have suggestions for windows free/dirt cheap
Syslog server
TFTP server

(I've tried Kiwi and Quest/pt360 for these)

 

[GregN]

Anyone have suggestions for windows free/dirt cheap
Syslog server
TFTP server

(I've tried Kiwi and Quest/pt360 for these)

I'm curious, what do you see as the problem with the Syslog functionality in pt360?