Top 5 Best Ping Monitor and Test Tools | Tek-Tools

Organizations face
issues like internet lag, latency, packet loss, and more affecting their
business operations and productivity. These issues may occur due to device
failure or network slowdowns. One of the simplest ways to identify the root
cause of these issues is to run a ping test. Pinging helps in assessing the
state of a network connection and various elements connected to it. By pinging
a network, administrators can extract crucial information such as the number of
lost data packets, latency rate of network requests, and the status of
available devices. To understand how a ping tool works, it’s essential to know
what ping is.

What
Is Ping and How Does It Work?

Ping
is a diagnostic tool or a networking utility program used to test network
connections. It is used to determine if an IP address or host is accessible. It
also measures and records the overall time required by each packet to reach its
destination. Ping tools use the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to
send echo request messages (known as ping) to the target network or IP address
at regular intervals. In response, the pinged devices revert an ICMP echo reply
(known as pong). This helps IT teams to gauge response time, test connectivity,
and report errors. The major role of ping tools such as SolarWinds®
Engineer’s Toolset™ is to collect and display ping information in
easy-to-understand graphs, charts, and tables.

Top 5 Ping Tools

Ping
tools coupled with network monitoring toolkits become capable of performing
various other functions, including network monitoring and management. The ping
data collected with these tools helps organizations understand the overall
network’s health, identify issues, and troubleshoot errors in real time.

Although the choice of a tool highly depends on organizational needs, SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset (Ping Monitor) is worth a try. It’s one of the best tools in terms of granularity, precision, scope, and visualization. It automates continuous monitoring across the network to deliver subtle information about devices, connections, and networks. Outlined below are the top five Ping tools to help identify issues by delivering real-time network information.

1. Engineer’s Toolset (ETS)

SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset is equipped with over 60 network management tools. Its powerful diagnostic capabilities help collect, analyze and correlate both nuanced and extensive network data. The entire package of ETS includes various diagnostic tools such as Ping, Enhanced Ping, DNS Analyzer, Ping Sweep, and Traceroute. Ping Monitor Software continuously monitors devices, routers, servers, and workstations to deliver real-time response pings. A simple ping tool is used to send ping requests to track the response time and packet loss, whereas the Enhanced Ping tool provides several graphing features to help visualize events. Using the Engineer’s Toolset, teams effectively manage, discover, and troubleshoot network errors. Teams get notified as soon as a business-critical device goes offline.

Ping Sweep Tool allows teams to send multiple packets across the network to several IP ranges. This helps in the management and allocation of IP addresses and in distinguishing active and unused IP addresses. Moreover, Proxy Ping software helps oversee the decentralized network. Using this software, admins can execute ping tests from remote locations to observe the latency between different remote locations. Teams can simplify various processes such as network management, remote administration, and network topology mapping. Try its fully-featured 14-day free trial to learn how it works and what all it possesses.

2. IP Address Manager

IP Address Manager is management software specifically designed to scan for a subnet in a network. It records the IP address status and hostname changes with the time stamp. The information delivered is highly valuable for network troubleshooting tasks. The tool saves time and helps prevent organizations from making costly errors. It uses active scanning to discover devices, subnets, and associated address blocks to identify abandoned IP addresses. Its ICMP ping sweep function allows teams to ping the entire network to get real-time data. The tool also integrates with DHCP, DNS, and IP address management software to administer the entire network environment from a single console. With its IP alerting and reporting feature, teams can easily troubleshoot IP address conflicts, and quickly resolve network issues affecting the overall performance of the organization.

3. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

Paessler PRTG is a network monitoring solution with a ping tool to test connections on your network. PRTG works on a sensor-based model, which means admins can add sensors to any device and create inheritable parent tags, set scanning intervals, and select a priority. Teams can define dependencies, automate responses, and prioritize tasks based on alarms. This helps them get notified via alerts if a system goes offline and cannot be reached. The ping sensors are extremely helpful in identifying packet loss, displaying minimum and maximum latencies, and monitoring the current network state.

4. ManageEngine Free Ping and Traceroute Tool

ManageEngine Free Ping and Traceroute Tool effectively monitors the availability of servers, routers, switches, mail servers, and websites. This tool helps fetch packet loss percentage, round-trip time of ping and its response, and the number of hops. Teams can view the successful and failed pings and monitor the status of the host using alerts. To watch events, teams can fetch the DNS records of websites, namely SOA, A, MX, NS, and Text, in seconds. The tool gives a graphical representation of TCP connection time, redirection time, and response time of websites.

5. PingPlotter Pro

PingPlotter Pro is a tracing tool operational on Windows, iOS, and Mac OS. It performs remote network monitoring via agents available on several devices. Administrators get a detailed view of the health of their network with summarized screens and jitter graphs. The tool also consists of an excellent GUI for representing data loss and latency. This helps admins troubleshoot errors by having full visibility into ICMP request transmissions.

Conclusion

Network
admins can save time with the ping tools highlighted above. However, deciding
on which tool to choose highly depends on factors such as the size of your
organization, network devices, and remote locations. To ensure all networked
devices are online and communicating seamlessly, it’s essential to choose a
well-designed software that can reduce the team workload and streamline data
collection. Besides various free ping software, premium options are also
available focused on preventing expensive downtime, tracking business-critical
devices that go offline, and bundling with other cost-effective network
management tools. SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset is always the first choice of
IT professionals looking to send multiple ping sweeps at a time across the
network. Along with its UI-oriented dashboard, it also offers continuous
monitoring and customizable reporting templates.