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We tested nine SNMP monitors priced at less than $1,000. Neon's LANsurveyor lit up our world BY BRUCE BOARDMAN
When we decided to review network-monitoring applications for our first regular Affordable IT feature, we were nervous. These network-management bad boys can be expensive, and we weren't at all sure whether the products that met our $1,000 price cap would be worthy. We dared to dream but kept our hopes in check, so we wouldn't be crushed if we found limited availability and products that offer response monitoring for just a few devices.
Silly us. We were blown away by the quantity and quality of the responses. We expected these tools to perform simple monitoring using ping and traceroute, and we got that for less than $100. We also found advanced features for less than $500.
We began with 10 entries: AdRem Software's NetCruch 3, Breakout Technologies' MonitorIT 6.0, Castle Rock Computing's SNMPc, ipMonitor Corp.'s eponymous product, Ip-switch's WhatsUp Small Business 2004, Neon Software's CyberGauge 6.0 and LANsurveyor 8.5, Nessoft's MultiPing 1.0 and PingPlotter 2.5 bundle, Quest Software's Big Brother and SolarWinds.Net's Engineer's Edition Toolset 7. But at the last minute, Castle Rock had to withdraw SNMPc when it raised the product's price to just above our $1,000 cap.
Our monitoring plan was simple: Track the uptime and response time of a few switches, routers, servers and maybe some IP services. We didn't expect the products to perform application or systems management, or deep SNMP tracking. After putting these products through their paces in our Syracuse University RealWorld Labs® (see "How We Tested Network Monitors," page 86), we found simple-to-configure, slam-bam, monitor it ma'am from the MultiPing 1.0 and PingPlotter 2.5 bundle, WhatsUp Small Business and CyberGauge, all of which cost from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. But the product that really tickles our cheapskate bone is Quest's Big Brother, priced at the grand total of free!
If you need automatic discovery, ipMonitor and MonitorIT have it. Need help with managing adds, removes and changes in the network? NetCrunch and LANsurvcyor provide periodic, schedulable network rediscovery, like much more expensive suites. All the products we tested have the expected status mechanisms, including notifications through e-mail, color statuses, triggered executables and audio cues....