Ping Monitoring is a common practice used to check the availability and status of network devices and computers using ICMP protocol.

With this method of monitoring, a special network packet is sent to the target device, to check if the device responds back with the same packet and the amount of time it takes to respond.

Ping monitoring helps you know if a device is online and is in an Active Mode.

If the device doesn’t respond to your ping, it simply means the device is not functioning or is Potentially Offline.

Also, ping tools check if the device is sending your request back within a reasonable amount of time and measures latency in your network. Again, there is a problem with your device if it takes too much time to respond.

Related Post: Best IPAM Software for Managing IP Addresses

Here’s our list of the best ping monitoring software:

1. SolarWinds Ping Sweep Tool Engineer’s Toolset – FREE TRIAL A network discovery utility that scans through a given range of IP addresses and identifies which are in use by devices on the network. The Engineer’s Toolset includes more than 60 system administration tools. Installs on Windows Server.
2. Paessler PRTG – FREE TRIAL A package of monitoring tools for networks, servers, and applications that includes Ping-based network testing and discovery sensors. Runs on Windows Server.
3. Site24x7 Network Monitor – FREE TRIAL A cloud-based network supervision system that includes a recursive Ping utility and is offered as part of wider system monitoring tools.
4. ManageEngine OpManager – FREE TRIAL A network and server monitor that uses Ping for device discovery. Available for Windows Server and Linux.
5. Nagios XI Based on the free Nagios Core, this infrastructure monitoring system deploys Ping for many of its network assessment tools. Runs on Linux.
6. Spiceworks Connectivity Dashboard A Cloud-based website availability monitor that is free to use.
7. ECMO Ping Monitor A straightforward Ping monitor with a graphical user interface that runs a sweep of all devices on the network. Installs on Windows and Windows Server.
8. Hammer Software Metaping A network monitoring tool that interprets Ping responses into graphs. Installs on Windows.
9. NirSoft PingInfoView An on-demand Ping tool with a graphical user interface that can Ping a list or a range of IP addresses. Runs on Windows and Windows Server.
10. Dotcom-Monitor ICMP Ping Tool (Dotcom-Monitor Server Monitoring) A network monitor that produces availability and response time graphs from recursive Ping test results. Runs Windows.
11. PowerAdmin A network and server monitor that includes a device discovery module. This tool lists devices by IP address and monitors their performance with Ping. Installs on Windows and Windows Server.

12. TallSoft Quick Ping Monitor Α powerful graphical IP monitoring tool that monitors the state of multiple IP equipment simultaneously and gives the results of their availability.

The Best Ping Monitoring Tools

Ping monitoring software takes a lot of burden off the shoulders of network and IT administrators, as they can now automate the process of manually pinging every device in the network to ensure that they are available and working all the time.

Here are some of the Best ping monitoring tools for monitoring the health and availability of servers – Some are Free and Some are Paid Enterprise Solutions that are scalable to massive infrastructures.

Below you’ll find a list of the Top Tools & Software you can use to monitor your Servers and network devices and a quick Review of how they work and their features. We suggest downloading the ones that you feel suit your needs and give you most well-rounded feature sets for your individual environment.

1. SolarWinds Ping Monitoring Tool – FREE TRIAL

The Engineer’s Toolset from SolarWinds is a tool that monitors devices continuously to report any problems right away using an easy-to-read and use graphical interface. Spotting downtime in your network infrastructure has never been easier!

Features

The features of SolarWinds ping monitoring tool are:

• You can select the devices you want to ping.
• The data collected by this tool can be exported as text files. Any images or reports can be exported as image files.
• This tool displays the collected data in the form of graph, ribbon, area, or line charts, depending on your preference.
• You can create a custom profile to monitor the devices in that list.
• Automatically discovers devices and even maps the network topology for you.
• It tracks not just availability, but also other aspects such as performance and latency.
• Comes with packet route tracing options to help you be in complete control over the performance of your device.

Official Download:

A free 14-day trial is available at:

https://www.solarwinds.com/engineers-toolset/registration

 

2. Paessler PRTG – FREE TRIAL

PRTG Ping Monitoring Software is a is a Windows-based monitoring tool that allow you to monitor the entire network through ping.

In PRTG, the ping sensor is a central sensor. During the setup process, a list of IP addresses are pinged and the initial monitoring is configured. If the ping fails on any device, you’ll get a notification right away.

Features

• Ping monitoring can be used to check the availability of all network devices.
• Notifications can be customized to meet your needs.
• An intuitive dashboard makes it easy for you to get a quick overview of the status of different devices.
• The setup and use is simple and user-friendly.
• It works well on different devices such as routers, switches, servers, PCs and more.
• Gives information about not just availability, but also other aspects such as downtime, uptime and connectivity.
• To get a more detailed look, you can include other sensors too such as SNMP, NetFlow and Packet Sniffing.
• The ping sensor is setup as the master sensor for your network devices. If this sensor fails, all the other sensors on your device switch to sleep mode. This means, your notifications will be crisp and prompt.
• It uses the Auto Discovery feature to ping your private IP addresses and to automatically create sensors for your network devices.
• Comes with a transparent licensing model.

Available sensors

Three sensors are available for ping monitoring, and they are:

• PING sensor – This is one of the most commonly used sensors and it displays the minimum and maximum ping time of a series of pings and information about packet losses.
• PING JITTER sensor – This sensor sends a bunch of ICMP requests to calculate the jitter. In general, a jitter shows the average deviation of latency to give you an idea of the quality of your service.
• CLOUD PING sensor – This sensor measures the ping time of your network from different locations in the world. This can be an important tool for companies that have an international presence.

Price:

The pricing of this product depends on the number of sensors and installations.

• Free for the first 100 sensors
• $1600 for 500 sensors
• $2850 for 1000 sensors
• $5950 for 2500 sensors
• $10500 for 5000 sensors

There are also two other plans that allow you to install unlimited sensors. The first plan called XL1 gives you the option to install any number of sensors in one core installation and costs $14500. The second plan called XL5 allows you to install any number of sensors on five core installations and the cost of this is $60000.

All these plans include one-year maintenance. To renew, you have to pay 25% of the original license price.

Official Download:

You can download a no limitation 30-day free trial at:

https://www.paessler.com/download/prtg-download

 

3. Site24x7 Network Monitor – FREE TRIAL

Site24x7 Network Monitoring is a cloud-based monitoring system that used SNMP to check on network device statuses and traffic throughput query protocols, such as NetFlow for bandwidth analysis. It uses Ping in many of its network searchers but it also has a Ping tool that can be accessed directly by the user.

The Ping utility is available from the network inventory and it offers the Ping function to be run to a specific device. This will run recursively at the frequency specified when setting up the request. Options for testing frequency range from every minute to once a day.

Features

• A cloud service that doesn’t need to be installed onsite.
• No upfront costs, such as software purchase server space, or deposits.
• No contract and so no service lock-in period.
• Offers the ability to unify the monitoring of networks on several sites
• Can monitor activities on cloud servers and the connections to them
• A recursive Ping that doesn’t have to be relaunched for each run.
• The option to set up many Ping runs on different devices to run simultaneously.
• A full menu of devices to run Ping on thanks to an automated device discovery function.
• Integration into a wider network monitoring tool.
• A Web-based dashboard that can be accessed through any standard browser from anywhere.

The Network Monitoring tool is part of the Site24x7 Infrastructure package, which also monitors servers and applications.

Price:

Site24x7 Infrastructure costs $9 per month if paid annually.

Official Download:

Access a 30-day free trial of Site24x7 Infrastructure with Network Monitoring.

https://www.site24x7.com/signup.html

4. ManageEngine OpManager – FREE TRIAL

ManageEngine OpManager uses Ping to reach each device connected to a network. This is the start of the OpManager network monitoring system. The service records each discovered device and adds more information discovered through the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The Ping and SNMP searches continue throughout the OpManager service life, updating the network inventory whenever changes in infrastructure are detected.

Features

• An autodiscovery system that identifies each connected device.
• Ping-based availability and response time checks for each connected device.
• Live Windows Server and Linux performance monitoring.
• Alerts for system issues.
• Notifications by email and SMS.
• An automatic network topology mapping service.
• Mapping for virtual infrastructure.
• An option for multi-site performance tracking.

The OpManager system also tracks server resources and some applications, such as VoIP VLANs, web, and email servers. The system includes a log server.

Price:

There is a free version of OpManager that is limited to monitoring three devices.

There are two paid versions: Standard and Enterprise.

Contact ManageEngine to get a quote on either of the paid versions.

Official Download:

Access a 30-day free trial of ManageEngine OpManager:

https://www.manageengine.com/network-monitoring/download.html

 

5. Nagios

Nagios offers a complete ping monitoring tool that monitors not just the health and availability but also reachability and packet loss.

Features

Some of the main features of this monitoring tool are:

• Helps you stay on top of the availability of different devices including your servers.
• You can determine the threshold level to get notifications.
• Sends different alert messages such as warning and critical, depending on the seriousness of the issue.
• Information about packet loss is available. This is important to ensure that your network is not compromised and the packet is returned to the sender safely.
• Any protocol failures or network outages can also be identified at the earliest.
• Fairly simple to use and comes as a part of the powerful Nagios XI monitoring tool.

Usage

You need to install a ping plug-in for monitoring. The most common Nagios plug-in is “check_ping” and it is used to monitor the ping output of a remote server.

You can find this plug-in under “usr/local/Nagios/libexec” directory, if you’ve installed Nagios directly from the source.

This is how you can use this command:

check_ping -H <host_address> -w <wrta>,<wpl>% -c <crta>,<cpl>%

[-p packets] [-t timeout] [-4|-6]

Here,

• -H stands for hostname or IP address of the remote server you want to ping.
• -w stands for warning limit
• -c stands for critical limit
• -p is for the number of packets
• -t is to change the connection timeout. By default, this value is 10 seconds.

Price:

Contact the sales team at https://www.nagios.com/products/nagios-xi/buy/ to know more about pricing.

Official Download:

You can download a free trial version from https://www.nagios.com/downloads/

 

6. Spiceworks

Spiceworks ping monitoring tool helps you stay on top of the performance and availability of different devices within your network.

Features

Below is a list of its features.

• Works well on IP-enabled cameras, VoIP devices, x-rays, scales, access control systems, websites, servers, routers and more.
• Setting up is easy. All that you have to do is add the IP address or hostname of your critical device and it gets automatically setup on your dashboard.
• Smart alerts help you to know if any of these devices are down or if there is any delay in response.
• You can set the timeout thresholds for every device.
• The dashboard is comprehensive and gives a quick overview at any time.
• Advanced reporting tool helps to create customizable reports

Price:

Spiceworks ping monitoring tool is free and even comes with support.
Official Download:

You can download this tool from:

https://www.spiceworks.com/download/monitor

 

7. EMCO Ping Monitor

EMCO Ping monitor is a robust monitoring tool that automatically checks for connection to network hosts and devices – We’ve recently reviewed EMCO in detail here if you’d like to learn more about it.

Features

Here is a list of its features.

• Besides connection information, it also provides other details such as uptime, outages, failed pings, etc. This gives you complete control over your devices.
• You can extend the functionality of this tool by executing custom commands. Alternately, you can choose to launch applications when the connection is restored.
• It works 24/7 to track the connection status from one or multiple hosts.
• It alerts you through Windows tray balloons, email notifications and even by playing sounds.
• It generates reports. You can choose a HTML or PDF format, and can even set it up to email this report to you.
• It sends ICMP ping echo requests and analyzes the replies to give you a complete idea.
• It saves and aggregates data about every ping, so you can get details about the average ping times and the deviations, if any.
• The information collected by this tool can be converted into visually-appealing charts and reports at any time. You can choose from a wide selection of templates for your report.

Editions

There are three editions of EMCO Ping Monitor available for you, and they are:

• Free edition – It allows you to monitor up to five hosts and does not allow any specific configuration. It runs as a Windows program, so monitoring is stopped if you log off from your Windows
• Professional Edition – This edition allows you to monitor up to 250 hosts. Every host can have custom configuration and it runs as a Windows service, which means, the monitoring will continue even if you log off.
• Enterprise Edition – This edition puts no limits on the number of monitored hosts. It includes all the available features and works in a client/server model. The server is a Windows service while the client is a Windows program that connects to the server through a UI. This way, multiple clients can be connected to the same server.

Price:

The free edition does not cost any money.

The professional edition has the following prices.

• EMCO ping monitor professional (single copy) – $99
• EMCO ping monitor professional (unlimited copies) – $245
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor professional from professional v5 (single copy) – $39
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor professional from professional v5 (unlimited copy) – $99

The enterprise edition comes with the following pricing.

• EMCO ping monitor enterprise (single copy) – $199
• EMCO ping monitor enterprise (unlimited copies) – $445
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor enterprise from professional (single copy) – $109
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor enterprise from professional (unlimited copy) – $219
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor enterprise from professional v5 (single copy) – $99
• Upgrade to EMCO ping monitor enterprise from professional v5 (unlimited copy) – $209

Official Download:

You can download from:

https://emcosoftware.com/ping-monitor/download

 

8. MetaPing from hammer Software

MetaPing is a visual tool that allows you to know the health and availability of your network devices.

Features

The features of MetaPing are:

• It is a small and quick tool that runs on Windows.
• You can see the availability and network latency at any time.
• Historical data can be represented in the form of visually-appealing charts and graphs.
• You can see the complete details of any host on your dashboard.
• Since it is a small utility tool, it doesn’t need much memory or CPU processing resources.

Price:
This ping monitoring tool from Hammer Software is free.
Official Download:

You can download it from:

https://www.hammer-software.com/download-metaping/

 

9. NirSoft PingInfoView tool

PingInfoView from NirSoft is a small utility tool that allows you to ping multiple hosts to check their status.

Features

The features of this useful utility tool are as follows.

• You can watch the status of many hosts in one single table.
• It accepts both hostname or IP addresses to ping.
• As a user, you can specify the number of seconds and the tool will automatically ping all devices once every x seconds you specify.
• The simple table displays the failed and successful pings as well as the average time taken for response, so you can see it all in one place.
• You have the option to save the results in a text, html or xml file. Alternately, you can also copy it to the clipboard.
• Requires no installation or .dll files. To use this tool, just run the executable file (PingInfoView.exe), type the hostnames or IP addresses you want to monitor and click “ok”.
• Supports more than 20 languages such as Arabic, Valencian, Russian and more.

System requirements

This tool runs well only in the following versions of Windows.

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 10.

 

It does not work in any of the older versions of Windows.

Usage options

There is a specific format and a set of options you need to know to use this tool. You should specify the IP address in the below format.

172.217.166.110 Main server

172.217.166.111 Host 01

172.217.166.112 Host 02

If you add a “#” character before a host name, this tool will ignore that IP address.

Other options you can use are:

• /stext <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a text file.
• /stab <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in tab delimited text file.
• /scomma <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a CSV file.
• /stabular <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a tabular text file.
• /shtml <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a html file.
• /sverhtml <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a vertical html file.
• /sxml <filename> – Makes a single ping and saves the results in a xml file.
• /loadfile <filename> – Loads the specified file
• /PingTimeout <value> – Specifies the ping timeout value in ms
• /PingEvery <0 or 1> – Specifies whether the tool should ping every x seconds. here, 0 stands for no and 1 stands for yes.
• /PingEverySeconds <value> – Specifies the number of seconds to wait between pings

Price:

This is a freeware.

Official Download:

You can download it from:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/pinginfoview.zip

 

10. Dotcom-Monitoring ICMP Ping Tool

This ping tool from Dotcom-monitor is an easy way to ping and verify the connectivity and status of many different devices in your network.

Features

• Uses ICMP ping requests to verify the status of any device on the network.
• Quickly identifies any network-related outages
• Sends alerts about issues, as soon as any monitoring goes below the established threshold limits.
• Reports are in a simple format and designed in such a way that anyone can understand, regardless of their level of IT knowledge.
• It can give information about UDP server availability by sending packets to specified ports and waiting for a response from them.

Price:

Contact the sales team at:

https://www.dotcom-monitor.com/contact-us/

Official Download:

You can download a fully functional 30-day free trial from:

https://www.dotcom-monitor.com/signup-sv-d1/?taskType=TraceRoute

 

11. Power Admin

The Power Admin comes with a simple interface and powerful pinging capabilities that hides the complexity from the user.

Features

• Allows to set simple ping alert threshold values, so you can alerts when the value goes below the threshold limits.
• When the host doesn’t respond within a given time, the configured actions are fired. You can set these actions.
• Complete flexibility, as you can determine the response time, targets, threshold values, and just about everything else.
• It can ping multiple IP addresses.
• The results are available in a clean and simple-to-read format.
• Many different reporting templates are available to meet your needs.

Price:

Contact the sales team at https://www.poweradmin.com/contact-us/ for pricing.

Official Download:

You can download a 30-day trial at:

https://www.poweradmin.com/products/server-monitoring/downloads/

 

12. TallSoft Quick Ping Monitor

TallSoft is a powerful graphical IP monitoring tool that monitors the state of multiple IP equipment simultaneously and gives the results of their availability.

Features

The features of this ping monitor include,

• Constantly monitors the state of routers, switches, network devices and more.
• Sends alerts through emails, messages and sounds.
• Notifications are sent within seconds of detecting a delay, so you can take corrective action right away.
• Monitors network lines and servers, so any break can be easily identified. This is particularly useful for large companies that have many network lines.
• It can monitor one block of IP addresses (65536 continuous IP addresses) at a time.
• This information can be displayed in visually appealing graphs for easy readability.
• There are four colors for different states. Green indicates normal, yellow indicates an unknown state, red and yellow in the case of a high package lost rate, and red in the event of a breakdown.
• You can set the length of a ping packet.
• It watches several parameters such as IP address, uptime, downtime, average response time, package lost rate and more.
• It can send emails to 256 administrators at the same time, notifying them of a problem.

Price:

This quick ping monitor tool is priced at $29.95.

Official Download:

You can download a trial version from:

http://www.tallsoft.com/download.htm

 

Conclusion

In short, having Ping Monitoring Tools or Software is a great way to know about the availability (or uptime), status, and performance of each and every device on your network.

The above list includes some of the Most Popular Ping Monitoring Software and Tools available in the market today, and they can sure take a lot of workload from your employees.