Talk:Comparison of network monitoring systems

additional columns

this page was quite a good start in looking for a proper system, in that it helped ruling those out that would never fit. Unfortunately the table is missing information about whether a system can warn about thresholds, and automatically learn such thresholds over time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.61.9.75 (talk) 09:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Network monitoring systems basically use two protocols to retrieve data from remote nodes: SNMP and WMI. Should WMI column be added next to SNMP column? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sonic1980 (talk • contribs) 11:26, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

it has been decided not to overload the table with extra information, and at some point there was a serious cleanup work. check page editing history, this overloading was done in many columns and made the table unreadable real quick --Richlv (talk) 08:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

General comments

Also, it'd be nice to have a row for 'inventory tracking' or similar, as several NMS's supposedly do that well. Thanks. Bobbozzo (talk) 00:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Not sure the "Response Time" column is adding anything, they are all listed as fast!? This needs to be removed or quantified? Mtcooper (talk) 14:19, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Removed. --Goldfndr (talk) 09:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't stand not having the table setup right so that it could be sorted. Fixed it.MikeD123 (talk) 00:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Does this really need more footnotes? --ssd (talk) 15:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if http://www.spiceworks.com/ belongs to this table but if it does, then it would be helpful for people if we add it. 198.102.112.18 (talk) 19:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think SpiceWorks should be added. It should be noted that the produce is not free, but is Ad Supported. I cannot review it as I'm not prepared to install it on any of my servers. DudleyThorpe (talk) 02:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Zabbix does support "Logical Grouping" if this means putting hosts into groups like "AIX". It also allows you to define a "Service" built from items in the inventory or other services: eg WebSite "Service" = Ordering "Service" + Customer "Service"; Ordering "Service" = Ordering App + Ordering DB; etc It also has a Map function that allows you to graphically represent you IT infrastructure and link it together with color/style coded links. DudleyThorpe (talk) 05:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

agreed, "logical grouping" should be explained - does it refer to host groups ? to monitored item groups ? --Richlv (talk) 11:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

yes, this is truly confusing. And how can Nagios be said to support "logical grouping" when GWOS does not? GWOS supports at least as much grouping as nagios does, as it is all nagios under the hood... LarsHolmberg (talk) 21:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

How about a column for indications of types of specific monitoring support -- e.g., Cisco or Juniper mibs, http/https service, Windows or Unix specific details. A good model for this would be the (almost obsolete) http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Cisco_PIX PIX page -- in other words, the column would give summaries like 'many' or 'Unix, network' with superscripts that point to footnotes with more complete details. The chart is also too large as it is, so this might be a good way to collapse categories. Categories in general seem to have sprung up to hype particular features of one app versus others. Another piece of useful information (as I'm finding in looking this month for monitoring packages) would be details on packages that include other packages (e.g., Zenoss, Zabbix -- Nagios ; opsview -- Nagios and MRTG, NMIS (MRTG and NMIS based themselves built on RRDtool) etc.). Also needs info on the server requirements (OS at a minimum), a number of packages now have installers for only specific systems (Ubuntu, Debian, Windows, Solaris, etc.), source for others, and a few now have pre-packaged VMWare images as well (NAI/ziptie, opsview, etc.) Skandha101 • 16:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

while i agree that table is a mess, adding more columns wouldn't help. maybe it should be split in 3 tables, like "general info" (like chart, autodescovery, distributed monitoring etc support), "can monitor" (snmp, ipmi, agents, tcp, icmp etc) and "technical info" (language written in, server os, data storage method etc). btw, what did you mean by "details on packages that include other packages (e.g., Zenoss, Zabbix -- Nagios" ? :) --Richlv (talk) 12:57, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually agree that it needs fewer columns, not more (which is what I was trying to say with the " a good way to collapse categories" and footnotes, bit). However, we do need to (and this is part of what you get at I think) prioritize the columns or present the important ones meaningfully. Maybe splitting it out would be the way to go. I recently re-discovered a master list of monitor stuff at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html . It does categorize by core functions (flow monitoring, analyzers/sniffers, host monitors) etc. -- I'm not sure it entirely succeeds (what about overlap or product development/scope increase?), but it is very useful as a starting point for some kinds of categorization.

As far as "packages that includes other packages," I mean that there should be some way to point out that some tools have either a monolithic multi-app install (one install script for a bunch of tools that also have independent existence, for instance) or piece-by-piece method (and even dependency) on different packages for the "one" tool (glorified super-dashboard?) to be set up. ossim is like that, as is opsview. the zabbix, groundworks, zenoss, etc. group all are built on top of nagios. Does that make sense? These apps that collect and simplify configuration (one conf file for multiple apps, e.g.) or set-up are very nice in some ways, and I think this is a good thing to point out to readers/people who may be evaluating different apps/frontends. Thanks. Skandha101 • 23:25, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

"the zabbix, groundworks, zenoss, etc. group all are built on top of nagios. Does that make sense?" - i'm sorry, but it doesn't if only because zabbix is not built on top of nagios ;) --Richlv (talk) 08:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if it's indended to be, but this article could be a great help for people trying to decide which monitoring tool to choose, or change to if they are not satisfied with theirs. A very important point then, as deciders focus on cost, would be a column saying e.g. "Method (and ease) of setup/configuration". The ease part is, obviously, almost impossible to accomplish.

I wouldn't want to explain to the managers why we have chosen that great, flexible, open source solution and then spent months figuring out the configuration to meet out requirements. 92.79.180.153 (talk) 10:01, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the concept, although it seems tough to implement in a meaningful way. "Ease of setup" has the potential to be very arbitrary and subjective. "Method" might be useful -- can you give some examples of the kind of content you'd put in a field like that? Lahnfeear (talk) 13:55, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Should Cricket be added? (http://cricket.sourceforge.net/) 99.109.224.110 (talk) 23:47, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

no wikipedia page, last release in 2004... first one is the real blocker, though. --Richlv (talk) 02:11, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Webapp

I think too many meanings are packed into this column. Currently, "Webapp" covers the following:

Web

Does this applicaiton display data on the web (yes for all listed so far)

Web management

Does this application allow managing of monitored items from the web

Events

the ability to acknowledge and record remedial actions

Someone just added the events column. Since all of these apps have web pages, and events is already represented, I'd suggest we reorder (and perhaps rename?) events, and rename Webapp to Web management. --ssd (talk) 12:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Events

I think the 'Alarms / Triggers' column conflicts with the 'Events' column, maybe rename 'Events' to 'Event Management', i.e. being able to assign events, accept events, acknowledge/close events, filter events, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.14.40 (talk) 04:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Is events fully redundant? Surely a system doesn't have triggers, but no way to acknowledge them?? Counterexample? --ssd (talk) 04:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

This article is an Advertisement

Or is there some other reason for i-enable rmf to be bold red in the product column and have a favorable result in each category? I went to the website for the product (which is only an ip address by the way, no domain name) it belongs to 3i Infotech, the company that makes the product, where they are selling remote managed services (using their rmf product).
If the article is not going to be deleted, I would at least recommend deleting the row for i-enable.Billybennett (talk) 18:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

entry is red because the linked page does not exist. quite basic mediawiki functionality. now, if that i-enable data is not correct, that is a different matter - it should be corrected or the row indeed deleted. --Richlv (talk) 06:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Inventory

Someone add a description what "inventory" should include, and I'll fill it in for the apps I know... --ssd (talk) 12:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

What exactly does "inventory" mean for this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.207.234.194 (talk) 17:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Extensions (External Scripts, Plugins, Plugin Creation)

The "External Scripts", "Plugins", and "Plugin Creation" columns are ambiguous. I propose that "Plugins" only refers to modules (shared objects, Perl-modules, ...) that are loaded at runtime and stay in memory but not the ability to execute custom scripts. --octo 131.188.30.161 (talk) 16:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The description of the "Plugin Creation" column is not helpful: what should go into that column? The general difficulty to write a plugin? Do custom scripts count, too? What if multiple possibilities exist? I propose to change that column to "no/yes + short description", for example "yes, .NET assemblies", "yes, embedded Perl", "no". The contents of "External Scripts" should not be considered for "Plugin Creation", given that external scripts are easy to write for any reasonably skilled systems administrator. --octo 131.188.30.161 (talk) 16:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Why does this article exist?

Isn't it synthesis (I don't see any links to reliable sources comparing all these products using these criteria) and original research (e.g. how were the comparison criteria chosen)? Please can someone explain how including this article (and presumably any number of other "Comparison" articles) can be justified? --Rogerb67 (talk) 01:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

A: I'm not a wiki editor, I'm just a wiki user. So I don't know about synthesis or other criteria you use in deciding if the article is good or not. I just know that I find this document useful at least because it brings to my attention all the different tools out there. It saves money for my company as I can look if there are free tools versus the tools I pay for and so on. Please rethink the deletion status. Again, I find it useful and I'm not the only one. Of course, if you want to make it more reliable please do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.196.214.14 (talk) 10:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

A: I agree the discipine for Wiki is lacking in this article however there is so much value that should be be saved. Im a Wiki newbie so there a process for nominating a clean-up crew ? beyond Deletion Nomination--Seanwong (talk) 05:32, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

collectd and trending

Per their site, collectd "...does not generate graphs. It can write to RRD-files, but it cannot generate graphs from these files." This software simply collects statistics and stores them in different formats (some traditionally used for trending, such as RRD). It is NOT intrinsically capable of trending. Lahnfeear (talk) 00:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

ZENOSS VERSUS SCOM

Hi,

Could you please help me in providing the following comparison report?. We are basically looking for a comparison, advantages and dis-advantages report between Zenoss monitoring tool and SCOM (Zenoss VS SCOM).

Zenoss :

Network monitoring YES

System monitoring YES

Database monitoring YES

Application monitoring YES

Middleware monitoring YES

SLA tracking YES

Multitenant accommodation YES

Software asset monitoring YES

Network configuration monitoring YES

Performance monitoring YES

Storage tracking YES

Forecasting Yes

Storage capacity planning YES

Reporting Yes

Integration with third-party tools YES

NEW Cloud Management Service (CMS) YES —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raj esh90 (talk • contribs) 17:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Where is SCOM

Speaking of which, wouldn't SCOM qualify for this table? Nonnb (talk) 12:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Free versus non-free, restrictions

I'd like to see more of a distinction between free solutions and commercial solutions, perhaps even breaking out products into (at least) two categories, as the people who are looking are FOSS are frequently not looking at commercial enterprise software, and vice versa. This is complicated when there is something like a 'community'/free edition and an 'enterprise'/paid version. In those cases it would be good to know what the limitations are on the community edition (e.g., monitor up to 100 nodes before licensing is necessary, etc.). Skandha101 • 16:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

what's "user tracking" ?

recently a new column, named "user tracking" was added with only few data points, and cisco product being the only with "yes". the already huge table now is even less readable, and there is no explanation offered as to what the hell does that even mean. it would be better to first discuss adding new columns on this talk page, and they should be explicitly explained, including why it is a noteworthy enough feature to be added to the table. once the table has been split, we can add whatever feature next monitoring system decides to advertise, but until then i'd suggest against adding new columns. unless a good rationale is provided for "user tracking", i vote for removing it, at least until tables is split up. --Richlv (talk) 10:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

omission of major commercial packages ?

Why no comparisons of these products to large commercial packages like HP Openview, Netcool, Tivoli, etc?

Bmccleer (talk) 08:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

omission of major commercial packages and ambiguous deletion of new vendors

BMcclear - there should be no reason why large commercial products can't be added by their respective vendors--- and if there is a feature in question, it should be called out in the talk page. In the same manner --- there should be no reason why other new commercial products, such as AccelOps, can't be added. For some reason, different vendors are being arbitrarily deleted. This is a very useful chart that many refer to. It provides a basic overview... and the means for users to investigate further on their own. I am sure opnet and others would agree.

Scottgwiki (talk) 03:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Scottgwikip (talk) 00:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

actually, this table is crap. first, columns are vague. second, there are too many of them. third, some of them are not explained. wtf user tracking ?

so here's what i would propose. 1. split the table in functional groups, creating several tables; 2. remove crap, undefined columns - probably added by some marketoid. if nobody knows what something means, just nuke it. 3. create specific definitions of columns; 4. no new columns added w/o discussion; 5. all cells should have some reference to back up their claims. --Richlv (talk) 09:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The Great Cleanup of 2010

Started on some SRS BIZNISS cleanup of this article today. Please feel free to chime in with any suggestions as we go. This thing has been getting messier and messier for way too long, and someone needs to take a scalpel to it soon or any real value left in it will be lost. Lahnfeear (talk) 16:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• I've been through several major updates of this article in the past couple of days. I wanted to drop a quick note about the latest, to explain: I'm removing the "Written in" column. As far as a comparison point between two or more network monitoring systems, it amounts to largely irrelevant fluff that only clutters the table. It's an interesting factoid, to be sure, but the truth is that most applications in this field use several different technologies and languages in their architecture, and the question of "which ones" doesn't rank high enough in most people's list of concerns to warrant being featured in a comparison like this. Lahnfeear (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• Update: PEOPLE, People, People... it's the first line of the freaking article. If the product you're adding is redlinked and can't be pointed at anything referencing it on WP, it doesn't belong here. It took too long to clean up all of the advertising in this article to let it get cluttered up with poorly-formatted and spammy entries. Start with an article on the product itself, and if it's notable, THEN add it here, not the other way around. Lahnfeear (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

just wanted to say thanks for the cleanup, it finally started to make some sense. you seem to be gone for a while now, though, and it's deteriorating again - please, come back ;) --Richlv (talk) 16:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Eeep! I'm sorry, I've been neglecting it. I promise I'll give it some TLC later this week :) Lahnfeear (talk) 20:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Operating system

There is no column for "operating system". Are all those tools cross-platform? Are they are for *NIX platforms only? Or do we have a mix of Linux, unix, windows and cross-platform apps? AugustinMa (talk) 11:53, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

That's a really good point. It's a mix of platforms -- I think adding an "OS" column would be very helpful to some people.Lahnfeear (talk) 14:36, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I would also like to see an O/S column. I have Windows, Linux, and other O/S variants to monitor (we're a consulting company); takes a while to dig through all the entries that just won't work. Jgwinner (talk) 23:02, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Open/Free vs Commercial

Would it be beneficial to split this into two articles, one of commercial and one of free/open? Generally if you're looking for information about an NMS, you're either after a free one or a commercial one, so mixing the two up just makes the article less useful. Also people looking for open systems are often looking at different criteria than those looking for commercial systems. For example, someone looking for an open system might be very interested in what language it's written in, but it's unlikely someone wanting a commercial system would care about that. Just an idea :) Adamathefrog (talk) 01:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You could split into separate tables, I wouldn't recommend splitting into separate articles. --Hm2k (talk) 08:56, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Because the table uses the sortable template, you can just click the header of the "License" column and sort everything by open source vs. commercial. Splitting it into two tables or two articles seems like a more cumbersome way of doing this. Lahnfeear (talk) 12:28, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd probably agree with this if the table wasn't already getting so large... --Hm2k (talk) 13:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not trying to be combative, I'm just trying to see what vision you have for this: How does having two tables, with the same number of columns as the current table, directly on top of one another, result in the page getting smaller? I'm all about trying to make this article more usable -- you should've seen it before we cleaned it up back in January. It was GARGANTUAN. Lahnfeear (talk) 14:34, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

An article longer than one or two pages when printed should be divided into sections to ease navigation. Keep up the good work. --Hm2k (talk) 16:33, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Part of my point was that the two types of product wouldn't necessarily have the same columns. It'd improve flexibility by having more information, and not waste space by unnecessary information? Adamathefrog (talk) 16:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

What columns would you add or subtract from each table? Lahnfeear (talk) 17:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Host OS and License type for open source stuff instantly springs to mind, whereas they're less important on commercial (though i think i said that above). The table also slightly ignores the fact that "network monitoring systems" is a very, very wooly term, and seems to be equally applied to a range of software, from data graphing systems like cacti to up/down monitoring systems like nagios, and everything in between. Perhaps splitting it into a couple of tables based on more accurate categories would be more helpful. I'm not 100% sure :) Adamathefrog (talk) 17:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

In addition to adding HP OpenView, WhatsUp Gold and Dorado Redcell, it would also be nice to add a column for "Flow Analysis" which references the growing important presence of NetFlow, SFlow or JFlow collection and reporting in a number of NMS products. For those that would complain there are already too many columns, I'd recommend a larger monitor. This table is quite useful and should continue to be expanded even if that means breaking it into separate tables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.229.18.194 (talk) 12:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I just added Dorado Redcell as requested by this user and I also added the page for this product and company. I was wondering if another entry might be needed for Dell OpenManage Network Manager, which is mentioned on the OpenManage Wikipedia page, and has been for years now. Dell OMNM is actually the same thing as Dorado Redcell with a different label on it so I didn't add this entry to the matrix because it would essentially be a duplicate entry. Maybe there should be one entry for "Redcell / Dell OMNM"? Brandonlee25 (talk) 04:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

In response to the request for a new column for "Flow Analysis" or "Traffic Flow Analysis", I'm going to add a new section to discuss this.04:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandonlee25 (talk • contribs)

network instruments observer entries

"network instruments observer" entries look more like advertisements, not neutral data :)

• "Proprietary High Performance Database" - "High Performance" is like from marketing materials. just "Proprietary Database" would suffice.
• why the orange background ? the fact that it's using a proprietary db doesn't warrant such a position, so same background as others should be used.

if there are no objections (and nobody else changes that), i'll make the changes listed above at some point

--Richlv (talk) 15:22, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree, it's advertisement. Didn't catch that until you pointed it out. I'll make the change. Lahnfeear (talk) 15:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

just wanted to say thanks for cleaning this page up - it finally makes at least some sense :) --Richlv (talk) 11:35, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Management features in addition to Monitoring

The focus of the feature set is on Monitoring, but there is also a great value in a Management set of features. I'm sure there will be a number of products that focus on either Monitoring or Management, but it would be very useful to see the overlap in functionality of products between the Monitoring and Management.

Some features I could see others would find useful:

* Remote/Automated Provisioning
* NetConf Support

There are otehrs, but I can't think of them right at the moment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.131.177.18 (talk) 14:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Verbosity of Zenoss entry

Some fields of the Zenoss entry seem to be excessively verbose (in comparison with other entries) - for example, "Yes; ZenPacks". Is the "ZenPacks" part really relevant? Similar case with other columns. Looks like coming from a marketing department... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.93.101.208 (talk) 19:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Will edit. Thank you! Lahnfeear (talk) 20:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

access control

"access control" column is a bit dubious. while most entries go between "Yes" and "No", some have "Multi-tier" and "Granular". unless specific definitions for each value are provided (which i suspect might be very arguable and also make the table hard to read), i'd propose changing all those to "Yes". --Richlv (talk) 22:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

removed unexplained additions to "access control" column --Richlv (talk) 09:09, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

license entries

some entries for license are quite different. most of the software that is available under a commercial license but has limited free version has "Limited free, Commercial". some have it different, though, including "GPLv2; (Enterprise edition available)", "Freeware and Commercial", "Commercial (Free)" and "Freeware and Commercial". maybe it's best to unite the message and cell colouring for them ? --Richlv (talk) 11:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

it's been a while, but there's still quite a mess in that column. my suggestion : unify it all to 4 types. if it's an opensource licence, current cyan colour is used, label is licence name. if it's a commercial licence, current purple colour is used, label is "Commercial". if there is a freeware version and wider functionality commercial version, colour is same purple and label is "Freeware and Commercial". if there is opensource version and wider functionality commercial version, colour is yellow and label is "Limited <licence name>, Commercial".

i plan to make this change in near future unless there is a good reason not to (i'd appreciate a comment from Lahnfeear ;) ) --Richlv (talk) 21:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea, go for it :) Lahnfeear (talk) 14:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Zabbix trend prediction

I'm pretty sure the software does not have such functionality. (http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11788) And there is nothing about this feature in the documentation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.77.172.62 (talk) 16:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Oops

That last revision note should have read, "...advertise Pandora FMS," not OpenNMS. Lahnfeear (talk) 14:07, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

the same columns seemed to be sneakily re-added later - removed them again --Richlv (talk) 16:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple table headers

I like having table headers in every 10 rows. It definitely makes the table more readable. However, sorting screws it up because it sorts all of the headers in a clump at the top of the table. Is there any built-in way for Wikipedia to better handle sorting and multiple table headers? Lahnfeear (talk) 12:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

- I agree the table has so many entries such that it makes it difficult to be useful. I'm out of the Wiki-loop recently, so I don't know if there are scrolling headers or anything similar available? In any case, having multiple table headers would still be better than what's currently there. geekyßroad^{. meow?} 14:50, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Before adding a new product to the list, make sure it's relevant

Before adding a new product to the list, make sure it has a wikipedia entry already, "proving" it's relevance and giving the reader the possibility to read more about it. Otherwise it could be subject to deletion. See this article's revision history. --62.143.143.25 (talk) 11:07, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

The new release date table

Love this idea. Bravo. Let's see if we can fill it up with some more data. I should be able to fill in four or five of them that I've worked with recently. Lahnfeear (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

SNMP supported version

I added specific version numbers to the SNMP column, but they were removed. Judging by the number of people who whined and moaned at us over the years to include v3 support, it seems important enough to some people (I actually don't use it, but apparently it's mandated by some security standards) that you might want to consider extending the table to include this. It should be able to fit in under "yes" without extra space, right? Adamathefrog (talk) 00:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

adjunct

https://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html - this page shall be added to the References.

1. http://www.ntop.org/ - one of the leaders in monitoring, opensource.

2. bandwidthd,

Ubuntu 13.04:

# aptitude show bandwidthd
Package: bandwidthd                      
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 2.0.1+cvs20090917-5
Priority: optional
Section: universe/net
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 224 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15), libgd2-noxpm (>= 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg) | libgd2-xpm (>= 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg), libpcap0.8 (>= 0.9.8), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, ucf
Conflicts: bandwidthd-pgsql, bandwidthd-pgsql, bandwidthd
Description: Tracks usage of TCP/IP and builds html files with graphs
 BandwidthD tracks usage of TCP/IP network subnets and builds html files with graphs to display utilization. Charts are built by individual IPs. Color Codes HTTP, TCP,UDP, ICMP, VPN, P2P, etc. 
 
 This is the static version, see bandwidthd-pgsql for multi sensor/php frontend bandwidthd.
Homepage: http://bandwidthd.sourceforge.net/

78.107.223.187 (talk) 05:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Why Column ESX/ESXi !?! - Please consider to remove it ...

IMHO, Favoring ESX/ESXi that way is very specific and favoring a product rather than giving the reader a better standpoint to evaluate network monitoring solutions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tevkar (talk • contribs) 19:31, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

interesting. on 28 June 2013 ESX entry was added. on 1 August 2013 netflow entry was added. both of those were added from ip 77.252.166.202, which has only edited this page and netcrunch page. by coincidence, both of these entries have been marked as "yes" for netcrunch and as "unknown" for everything else (with a few entries added later).

whois on that address says it belongs to "ADREM Software Sp. z o.o.", which is... you guessed it, developer of netcrunch.

and turns out there has been another entry added by the same ip on 28 June 2013 - "Layer 2 Maps", with similar situation as the first two.

this is so blatant and ugly that i propose removing all 3 added entries.

--Richlv (talk) 05:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

i've removed those 3 entries --Richlv (talk) 11:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

You've removed them because they were added by NetCrunch? The ESX/ESXi column was to be added by editor Captain Conundrum (who abruptly retired), and it's definitely important as many solutions do not support it. He had been the one maintaining this page, and i had been working with him. With his departure, there was nobody left to do it. NetFlow support is very important, and i can't imagine how you could deny that fact. A simple column named "maps" does not give a reader an accurate picture of what is offered in terms of those maps. Nothing is ugly, and all additions have been properly noted. What looks just as ugly is an editor only updating Zabbix and deleting revisions. Removing "ADREM" from NetCrunch but leaving the names of other companies on the list IS ugly. My updates here have been only to update the page, and add relevant information. It is up to others to fill in whether the product supports these features or not. I also updated "agent" to "agentless" as being agentless is preferred, but many solutions put "yes" for agent even though they were agentless to have more green blocks.

- no, the entries were removed because a) they were added with just 'yes' for a single product by somebody from that company; b) because adding them was not discussed in advance; c) because this way adding "features" could extend the table indefinitely

- somebody planning to add something alone is not a good reason to add it. also, this page is not/was not 'maintained' by a single user - for example, user Lahnfeear has done a lot of work on it, too

- if somebody else would have planned to add a column, it would be expected that a) this is discussed in advance; b) the information is added about as many solutions as possible, instead of adding single 'yes' entry

- i have made all of my edits (except by accident, maybe ?) from my user account and have never hid facts about my involvement in certain projects like zabbix or any other. those edits were not made by a logged in user

- company names were left in for entries where the company name is part of the product name and wikipedia page name is including them, too; additionally, kaseya entry was modified to match wikipedia page name, too

- it is not reasonable to add extra columns and then claim that "It is up to others to fill in"

- being agentless vs providing agent is not inherently better or worse, i'd say. both approaches serve specific needs. while i'm not sure about that specific change, i did not do anything about it because of being unsure - even though i dislike the fact that the edit was not discussed before either

--Richlv (talk) 15:11, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

- appropriate answers were put for those solutions i knew the answer to. Adding them was discussed with Captain Conundrum who had been very active and helpful, i was unaware there was such a forum for discussion. There were discussions with him and others.

- if the columns were unnecessary, perhaps you should have had a discussion? instead of simply clicking undo and wasting the time put into it? i was unaware this talk page existed (only found it through clicking on your edits. came into contact with Conundrum and his page where he held discussions on column changes by updating NetCrunch entries).

- I never created an account, but using the same ip isn't exactly hiding, is it? You didn't uncover a conspiracy, Sherlock.

- Just like OPNET's AppResponse Xpert? NetQos Performance Center? IBM Tivoli? HP Network Node Manager? Centina Systems NetOmnia? Please visit the website: www.adremsoft.com, and you'll see the the title of the page: Adrem NetCrunch, the name of the product, and something that hasn't been edited for years. While i can understand disagreeing with the addition of columns, removing this was done out of spite because you "connected" the ip address to the company.

- why is that not reasonable? people should be maintaining their pages, and updating them. I earlier added responses that nobody else had filled in for me.

- not inherently better or worse? really? you don't see a difference between having to install an agent on each device and not? If there is no difference, then remove the column.

- "this is so blatant and ugly that i propose removing all 3 added entries." - hyperbole much? and how long before your 'proposal' and your deletion?

- NetFlow monitoring should be titled Traffic Flow Monitoring, but was changed to NetFlow since it was shorter and NetFlow is the industry standard.

- Something more descriptive than "maps" should be included. What does "maps" mean?

- ESX/ESXi support should obviously be included as a column.

I will add proposals here from further on, as i was unaware of this page. I think you should however consider your reactions to my edits.

--Mrojek (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:24, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

- i'm sorry that you were not aware of talk/discussion pages - these have been part of mediawiki and wikipedia for ages, and thus many contributors take knowledge for granted

- as noted, this intent was added to the discussion page and only carried out later

- thanks for creating an account now. btw, you can sign your contributions/comments by four tildes (commonly preceded with a doubledash)

- let's see... "OPNET's AppResponse Xpert" should be removed completely, because there is no article about the product itself; same for "NetQos Performance Center"; ibm tivoli is ok, as that's what the product is called, and that's also the name of wikipedia's page on it; i'd argue that "Centina Systems NetOmnia" should be removed as well, it only links to a company page

also, modifying of the name was not done "in spite" - you can observe that wikipedia page on the product is named exactly like that, so the listed name was simply unified to what the page is actually named like

- the unreasonable part is adding some features and only filling them in for your product, then asking for somebody else to fill in everybody else. adding those features on it's own is disputable, but assuming it was not, the one adding them is responsible for doing initial work and gathering information for as many entries as possible right away

- not really - what i meant, agent will often provide extra features, thus having an agent is a benefit. on the other hand, _requiring_ and agent (and not offering agent-less mode at all) can be a drawback, as you noted. thus i'd somehow make that column distinguish between requires/offers agent and offers/not agentless mode

- i believe there were a couple of weeks between starting the discussion and making the changes. sorry if that felt less than enough

- i'm not disputing the name of some columns, i hoped that was obvious

- what does "2nd level maps" mean ? ;) how does that differ from "maps" ? that was one column i'm still ready to oppose STRONGLY, unless somebody can provide specific, not product dependent, definitions

- how would that be defined ? what functionality must be included to qualify ? (not disputing the column as such completely, but it is way too unclear; also, should columns for kvm, xen and other solutions be added at the same time ?)

--Richlv (talk) 20:50, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

- Layer 2 maps refers to physical segment maps, and i think this is actually very important, and a good way to differentiate solutions: http://www.whatsupgold.com/glossary/network-mapping-tools/layer-2-network-mapping-software.aspx. I think maps in general is a poor category, it doesn't mean anything. Perhaps an update to automatic maps would be of more interest, since what solution doesn't offer maps in some way?

- The categories were added to modernize the list of categories here... there are a lot of categories but they do not honestly tell you much. Why is SNMP even there? Other than 2 solutions that haven't been updated in years, everybody supports it (hard to imagine any serious solution not).

- I'll talk with upper management RE: how they want this to be listed, according to the website the product is AdRem NetCrunch, but wiki is listed simply as NetCrunch

- On August 13, someone posted re: Why is ESX/ESXi support here. On August 14, you wrote that you proposed deleting all my entries, and on the 26th to ZERO responses you did. These were columns that had updates done to them by those who were active and focused on keeping their wiki entries up to date, and apparently had no problem with the columns.

- Instead of simply ESX/ESXi there could be a virtualization column instead? But again, like with NetFlow vs Traffic Flow, ESX is the industry standard. What i understand the goal of this wiki page is, it's to compare the various network monitoring solutions out there. To do that, you'd want to include columns on the various most important things you'd expect a solution to support. SNMP like i wrote earlier? What about plugins? It's all 'yes' save for ExtraHop. That doesn't differentiate anything. Same with triggers/alerts.

--Mrojek — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.252.166.202 (talk) 09:34, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Any thoughts on any of this?

removing release info from the first table

with the new release table, having latest version & date in the first table only clutters it and duplicates information. i propose to remove version info from the first table and will probably do so in a month or so if there are no objections --Richlv (talk) 11:18, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

ok, the latest stable version column is actually missing from the second table. this will take a bit more effort to do ;) --Richlv (talk) 19:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

dopplerVUE entry

dopplerVUE entry does not link to a proper article, but to a company article. that does not meet the notability criteria as per this comparison page. if a proper product page is not notable enough, this entry should be removed. i will probably do so in a couple of weeks --Richlv (talk) 11:20, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

for the record, this was changed to 'neural star', still having the same issue --Richlv (talk) 15:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Developer Name

Previous discussion have focused on removing developer names from the list of products in this table. I was alerted from a colleague of Kuru reverting his edit from Axence nVision to nVision back. User Kuru is a respected, long-time user and admin at Wikipedia, i will revert to his example (as well as HP/PA/CA/NetQos/Verax/Etc). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrojek (talk • contribs) 11:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Could care less what name is used; my sole concern is that you link directly to the wikipedia article. Try not to read to much into an edit. Kuru (talk) 11:38, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

What is linked directly to the wikipedia article? This was an issue some time ago as you can see in the previous discussions. You seem to know what you're doing is all, so just want to make the table uniform. Not sure how to sign... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrojek (talk • contribs) 11:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Munin / Groups

I use munin and I enjoy the grouping function. I guess it's exactly what "logical grouping" means, but it's marked as "no" here.. any reason or just a mistake ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orzelf (talk • contribs) 21:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

New column for "Traffic Flow Analysis"?

One important aspect of network management that is supported by several of these products is traffic flow analysis. This is made possible by setting up one or more network devices to export traffic flow data (in the form of Netflow, JFlow, SFlow, IPFIX, etc.) to a management server, which collects and analyzes this data. In an earlier comment above, someone suggested this information is useful alongside the other information about which products support trending, SNMP, Syslog, etc. I did a little research to see which of these products support analysis of traffic flow data. Any product that supports something in the Netflow family (including JFlow, NetStream, and IPFIX), or if it supports SFlow, then it gets a "Yes". My methodology involved going to the website and seeing if it mentions any of these technologies and also doing web searches. Here's what I found:

AccelOps	yes
AdRem NetCrunch	yes
AggreGate Network Manager	yes
Argus	yes
Argus - The all seeing	no
Avaya VPFM	no
Cacti	no
Centina Systems NetOmnia	no
Check MK	no
collectd	no
GroundWork Inc.	no
ExtraHop	no
FreeNATS	no
Ganglia	no
Glasswire	yes
HP Network Node Manager (NNMi)	yes
IBM Tivoli Network Manager	yes
Icinga	no
InterMapper	yes
IPHost Network Monitor	yes
isyVmon	no
Kaseya Network Monitor	yes
Kaseya Traverse	yes
ManageEngine	yes
Monitorix	yes
Munin	no
Nagios	via plugin
NetQoS Performance Center	yes
Network Instruments Observer Infrastructure	yes
NetXMS	no
NeuralStar	yes
CA Nimsoft Monitor	yes
Observium	yes
OpenKBM	no
OpenNMS	yes
Opmantek NMIS	yes
OPNET's AppResponse Xpert	yes
Opsview	yes
op5 Monitor	no
OSI NetExpert	yes
PA Server Monitor	no
PacketTrap	no
Pandora FMS	yes
PathSolutions	no
Performance Co-Pilot	no
PRTG Network Monitor	yes
Redcell	yes
Scrutinizer	yes
ScienceLogic	yes
ServersCheck	no
SevOne	yes
Shinken	no
Solarwinds	yes
CA Spectrum	yes
Spiceworks	no
TclMon	no
uptime software	yes
Verax NMS	no
Xymon/Hobbit	no
Zabbix	no
Zenoss	no

Should we publish this as a new column in the table? Brandonlee25 (talk) 04:41, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Naemon

What about it? I guess it should be in this camparison? --Llorenzi (talk) 09:38, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

There is an article for Naemon so there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be in the table.Brandonlee25 (talk) 03:33, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

If someone wants to add it then why not? It does have an article. Jhom526 (talk) 18:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Please add Naemon or Thrunk / Naemon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.151.232.98 (talk) 04:26, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

VitalSuite

I see that VitalSuite was recently added and this entry links to Alcatel-Lucent, but this page makes no mention of VitalSuite. My first question: Shouldn't the page it links to at least mention the product? My second question: might it be the case that VitalSuite could be one of the other products in the list re-branded and distributed by Alcatel-Lucent? If this happens to be the case then this leads to my third question: Should re-branded products be in the list in addition to the base product? Products like SolarWinds and Redcell are branded and distributed by hardware manufacturers, but these branded products (i.e. Dell OMNM, etc.) are not in the list because they would essentially be duplicate entries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandonlee25 (talk • contribs) 03:31, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The legend clearly says that entries should link to the product pages. Also see this comment : https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems#The_Great_Cleanup_of_2010 . As for the rebranded versions, no, they definitely should not have their own entry in this list - as you mentioned, it would be useless cluttering of the table. --Richlv (talk) 22:08, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

i'm not sure this page is useful in it's current form

So I just ran across this page, and gotta say I feel like it's not particularly useful. Or, at least, it could use a some cleanup to make it better:

• It seems like the primary use of this compilation would be for sysadmins/ops engineers to review the product space and make informed decisions. But because a number of the players in this space are excluded it's not serving this goal.

What "players" are excluded? Actually come to think of it I don't see Cisco Prime on the list. That's a pretty significant omission. There have been quite a few attempts to add new entries to the table in recent months that aren't accompanied by articles for the product or company, so because of the rules these revisions are reverted. These products are not likely to be major "players" in the market if they aren't significant enough to be mentioned in some other article, however.Brandonlee25 (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

So there's a number I've noticed that are missing -- Scout, CopperEgg, LogicMonitor, Data Dog. Each of these are represented in other such lists:

* http://curious.stratford.edu/2014/10/10/10-best-application-performance-management-tools-of-2014/

* http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-management/20-cloud-monitoring-and-management-tools-which-are-best

* http://haydenjames.io/20-top-server-monitoring-application-performance-monitoring-apm-solutions/

If the rules (which rules?) are such that an article is needed for each entry, then it seems like it's better to create a stub article for each product rather than exclude them outright. Hey that my login (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The rule about only adding entries that have their own wikipedia page is very important - if a product is not notable enough to have a page, adding it here is only done for advertising purposes. --Richlv (talk) 22:06, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

• There's been discussion (but no action) about the merits of separating FOSS vs commercial products. When I've previously compared such solutions, budget was a key factor for me. It seems like this would be a reasonable improvement.

This makes sense in my opinion. The "License" column already shows this, so these products could be separated into two tables.Brandonlee25 (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

It does, but it potentially makes the table size unwieldy (in fact it already is IMO). Hey that my login (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

That does sound useful. Sorting by the licence column helps a bit, but is not too readable either. But then there's also the problem that some products are proprietary, some are open core (with other useful features in proprietary modules/other versions), and some are opensource. I'd probably suggest creating a bullet lists of those three categories instead of butchering the main table. --Richlv (talk) 22:06, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

• A number of the features included in modern monitoring solutions are missing from the comparison: hypervisor (ESX/HyperV), Netflow, IAAS (AWS/Azure), WMI/Perfmon/Powershell, etc. This deficiency has been mentioned previously but without action.

Well, I know there was concern that the table would have too many rows to be readable and usable at some point. One idea is maybe to have a table where the columns indicate support for different kinds of technologies such as SNMP, Syslog, WMI, NetFlow, etc. and another table to indicate support for certain user-friendly features such as a web app, logical grouping, etc. Also, if you notice in a section above I put together a proposed column for "traffic flow analysis" and my research was based on whether the product supports either Netflow/IPFIX or sFlow. If there was enough room for columns, these could be broken out, since you might be interested to know if a product supports this or that traffic flow protocol, just like you might want to know whether it supports any of the other technologies.Brandonlee25 (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Agree completely. Hey that my login (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Adding new columns should be discussed very carefully. I'd suggest starting a new discussion about each individual column and precisely defining what the column would denote. One thing is that the table huge already, another - have you seen "comparisons" on many vendor sites? There have been attempts to add all kind of crap columns here, too... --Richlv (talk) 22:06, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

What needs to happen to get consensus on making these fixes?

I think these are good ideas and I've responded to each bullet point.Brandonlee25 (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Ok. So are you and I the sole arbiters of what makes sense? Does one (e.g. me) just start editing once we've come to agreement on improvements? Hey that my login (talk) 01:46, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I figure there should probably other editors who might want to weigh in so I'd give it a few days.Brandonlee25 (talk) 03:15, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Seem to be missing BMC Proactivenet/Patrol (Truesight seems to be the rebrand name for them currently) from this list.

I work with it and I think that it certainly fits into the category of the above systems.

BMC Truesight Home

DonMcL (talk) 00:44, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

The cleanup of 2016

the cleanup of 2010 was very great, but since then the page has gotten more and more messy.

i'll try to find some time to clean it all up again. will start with the simple things - removing redlinked entries, and entries that point to generic company pages, not product pages. please do not add such entries. if there's no product page, work on that first. --Richlv (talk) 15:52, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

a reminder - i plan to remove all entries that do not link to a product page at some point this month. please work on product pages if you would like to keep those entries. --Richlv (talk) 08:26, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Please be careful in encouraging the creation of articles to "meet inclusion criteria". This article (and many of the product and company articles linked from it) seems to suffer from (at best) COI editing and (at worst) possible issues relative to WP:PAID. (Far too many articles linked from here were created by apparent SPA users). Absolutely another "cleanup" (or indeed an extensive "cull") is required. But perhaps best to avoid encouraging the creation of articles (which would likely inherently fail WP:PRODUCT) as yard-stick for inclusion criteria. Guliolopez (talk) 00:41, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

that's a very good point. i meant it more as an encouragement to create more quality articles, but there seem to be too many people not understanding that and treating this only as yet another platform for spam... --Richlv (talk) 01:13, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

NRPE

I think it would be good to have a column for NRPE support. I came here for that info, and it's lacking. I bet I'm not the only one. Many people probably have legacy Nagios plugins, but want to move away from Nagios (or at least want to see what other options they have). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dawhitfield (talk • contribs) 20:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I suppose I might as well go ahead and start a list:

• Icinga
• Nagios
• Op5
• OpenNMS
• Zenoss (https://www.zenoss.com/product/zenpacks/nrpe-component)

Icinga does not support Oracle for IDO database

This is a historical artifact since it was supported at one time but is no longer.

WilliamsJD (talk) 15:43, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Notability issue

I put PathSolutions back on the list. The reason some editor took it off the last fall was because it was not "notable", per the notes they left. However some of think so of us think that is is a notable company, due to its press, growing foot into the market. But more importantly, if you were only going to do a list of notable companies, then what good is a list for someone trying to find all the companies that exist and compare them? Let's review the article premise, it says: "The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of network monitoring systems." I do not see the word "notable" in the premise of the article. Goldenrowley (talk) 09:20, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

This is a list of things that already have Wikipedia articles (it says 'Please see the individual products' articles' for example), so I removed the list entry again. I also inserted the word 'notable' with link to what Wikipedia means by that. In other circumstances I would say write an article first, but PathSolutions has already been deleted at AFD on four occasions, so it seems very unlikely an article would survive at this point. - MrOllie (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Ok I hear you. Most lists of companies IMHO should consider them notable if they are in the niche market and have a sizable business, and probably length of time. Most of the things in this comparison list are stubs with no notable press at all listed. I won't have time to judge each of them. Just thinking in THIS article the criteria and premise should be list of companies that offer network monitoring systems, regardless of it an article was written, and perhaps to weed out the mom-and-pops have a critera on business size, and length of time in business. Goldenrowley (talk) 20:15, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Problem with Legend

Although the tables has a column "MIB Compiler", there is no definition for it in the Legend. WilliamsJD (talk) 18:25, 21 January 2021 (UTC)