Nagios Network Monitoring Software

Nagios is the leader in system, network, and application monitoring. Nagios is widely recognized as one of the best monitoring applications on the market. It got many awards and Nagios is free!

Let’s see what Nagios offers:

1. It can monitor Windows, Linux/Unix, Routers, Switches, Firewalls, Printers, Services, Applications.
2. You may receive immediate notifications of problems via email, pager and cellphone.
3. Acknowledge problems through the web interface.
4. Automatically restart failed applications, services and hosts with event handlers.
5. Schedule downtime for anticipated host, service, and network upgrades.
6. Multiple users can access the web interface.
7. Trouble ticket systems.
8. Over 200 community addons are available to enhance Nagios.

Nagios is the open source software, You will get full access to source code.

It was written many books about Nagios (you may find them at Amazon or download for free, please google it). And there are detailed instructions how to install. So you may try it by your own.

And as it was told there were a lot of addons and plugins for Nagios network monitoring system to enhonce it.

I’ve done a description of 2 network montioring tools and software. So concider to leave a comments about those network monitoring services. Thanks.

Network Monitoring by Dotcom-monitor.com

Well, after a short network monitoring introduction i would like to review online network monitoring service by Dotcom-Monitor.com Dotcom is well known network and website monitoring service and company since 1999 year. It is a leader on the market of many services which can monitor and test your network, websites, applications, custom scripts, many protocols etc. The head office is in MN, USA. Dotcom has a great experienced team of programmers and support which keep network monitoring service up to date and on high-end level.

So, Dotcom offers the following services: website monitoring, network monitoring, business transaction monitoring, website load testing. Let’s review some of this monitoring services.

Website Monitoring

This option includes: Web Site Monitoring (HTTP), Secure Website Monitoring (HTTPS), Certificate Verification, Content Check, Accessibility Check, Performance Check, Cookie Support etc. You may check all the specific information at their website http://www.dotcom-monitor.com.

Network Monitoring

This is my favourite service cause i i’ve been using it for several years. So network monitoring service includes: monitoring of POP3/SMTP, FTP, UDP, Telnet, SOAP, Ping, DNS and even Media Monitoring (Video and Audio). This is a great list of services for your business. Being a member at Dotcom you will be notified when something goes wrong with those protocols and services.

How i know when my server/network is down?

Ok, Dotcom has many servers on different continents to send agents which monitor you website or entire network. And when one of your online services or protocols are off you will be notified by Email, SMS, Phone Call etc.

Free or Paid?

Dotcom offers free service. But you have to set up a small banner on your website to be registered. And not all the services will be available for your.

Paid service allows you to use all the monitoring services without limits. And you don’t have to put any banners on you website. The prices differs. It depends on what solution you need for your business. Please check the prices at Dotcom-monitor.com

Mmm… I think this is enought for the first time. I really recommend Dotcom’s monitoring service because it is not so expensive, stable, powerfull and easy to set up. Next time i gonna tell you about Nagios network monitoring software. It is open source (free to use) but demands to posess some admin skills.

Any comments are welcome

Network Monitoring Introduction

So, what is network monitoring and why do i need this service?

Network monitoring term describes any agent which can access your website, script or protocol and can analyze if it is working or not. Usually it is a custom script agent (bot) which checks your network monitoring status automatically from different locations and with exact time interval. Then this agen collect some data and test your network or website for many parametres: loading, stress test, uptime, ping etc.

So i hope you got it

Then, why it is so important to have such a service? You’ve probably noticed that not all the hosting companies offer reall 100% uptime. Or server overloading can influence on your website loading. Then you need to be in touch of this troubles. When server is down your online business is down too, there are no customers, no transactions, no profit. And to be notified of such “bad” situation you need network monitoring agent. By using network monitoring service you may look after your website’s uptime, script response and etc. You will be notified by different methods: email, sms, phone call etc. This is very important to have such alerts, so you may return your server back quickly and not to lose your potential customers.

Next few posts i will describe some powerfull network monitoring softwares and online services you may use to monitor your network.