Editor's review
A tool to continuously manage a local area network and to monitor its performance.
Pros: Total Network Monitor enables a local area network (LAN) administrator to monitor the performance of the network from a single location. This location is the Network Management Center at the center of the Total Network Monitor solution, which as its name suggest allows the LAN administrator to manage the network in addition to monitoring. A number of aspects such as the HTTP, FTP, SMTP & POP3 servers functionality, the states of a number of services, an event log, the Registry entries on a number of machines can all be checked at a central location. It allows an administrator to create monitor lists for utilities, services, file systems, etc. – each monitor consists of a probe which continuously probes a particular device or service (port number) to see if it is functioning properly (how often is customizable and determined by the administrator) and actions which are list of things to do in case of a failure or error being determined.
Cons: Generally, there is little to complain about its overall working and usability. The question though, is that which computer is the Network Management Center going to be located at. Supposing you had created monitor lists and so on, but that particular computer goes down. This can potentially be a problem. The other thing is that the approach taken to monitoring is a probing approach, and one that necessarily requires some understanding of what’s going on to use it effectively. So it is preferable for more experienced administrators. But then those more experienced administrators may prefer more advanced tools (which do more than just probing).
Overall: 4 stars. 5 stars also possible. It works well and has a decent interface. The problem might be the probing approach it takes to monitoring, which requires a fair amount of prior knowledge on the part of the administrator.
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