Network Monitoring

I need a piece of software that will monitor traffic throughout a network and be able to identify any corrupt or damaged packets being sent.

And if possible a utility / plugin or plugin of the software to be able to report on which desktop / server is sending / receiving the highest percentage or network transmissions.

Any recommendations would be great, very urgent - even paid one’s if you have to..

(bar Cisco’s Network Monitor - $14,999)

Nagios - http://www.nagios.org/

Formerly known as SAINT. OSS, so it’s free.

Main features:

  • Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
  • Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, etc.)
  • Monitoring of environmental factors such as temperature
  • Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own host and service checks
  • Ability to define network host hierarchy, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
  • Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or other user-defined method)
  • Optional escalation of host and service notifications to different contact groups
  • Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
  • Support for implementing redundant and distributed monitoring servers
  • External command interface that allows on-the-fly modifications to be made to the monitoring and notification behavior through the use of event handlers, the web interface, and third-party applications
  • Retention of host and service status across program restarts
  • Scheduled downtime for supressing host and service notifications during periods of planned outages
  • Ability to acknowlege problems via the web interface
  • Web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc.
  • Simple authorization scheme that allows you restrict what users can see and do from the web interface