13 Best Network Administrator Tools [Updated List For 2024]

Select the Network tools for your home or business based on this review of the Best Network Administrator Tools:

Network administration is the process of tracking and monitoring all your network resources, like network switches, hubs, routers, servers, and many other network devices. We cannot underestimate the need for a network administrator tool.

Some of these tools will help you detect the root cause of a particular network problem. You can use it to troubleshoot and solve the issue. You can also use it to manage the entire network resources.

Network Tools Review

Our Top Recommendations:

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor	ManageEngine OpManager	NinjaOne
• Traffic Monitor • Cloud Monitoring • Custom Reporting	• WAN Monitor • CISCO ASI Monitor • Fault Management	• Auto-Remediation • Task Automation • Automated Patching
Price: Starts at $2149/yr. Free Trial: Available	Price: Starts at $95 Free Trial: Available	Price: Quote-based Free Trial: Available
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List of Top Network Administrators Tools

Here we have listed the popular and remarkable network tools:

1. AKIPS
2. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
3. ManageEngine OpManager
4. NinjaOne
5. Perimeter 81
6. NordLayer
7. Wireshark
8. FileZilla
9. Clonezilla
10. Notepad++
11. Fiddler
12. Sysinternals Suite
13. Nagios XI
14. DataDog
15. SoftPerfect Network Scanner
16. PuTTy
17. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Comparison of the Best Network Tools

Tools	Platform	Free Trial	Price	Our Ratings
AKIPS	Cross-platform	30 days	Quote-based
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor	Windows & Web-based	Free version, Free trial for 30 days	The price starts at $2149
ManageEngine OpManager	Cross-Platform	30 days	Quote-based
NinjaOne	Cross-Platform	Available	Quote-based
Perimeter 81	Cross-Platform	NA, free demo available	Price starts at $8 per user per month.
NordLayer	Cross-platform	Free demo	Starts at $7/user per month
Wireshark	Cross-platform	NA	Free & Open Source.
Filezilla	Cross-platform	NA	Free & Open Source.
Clonezilla	Cross-platform	NA	Free & Open Source.
Notepad++	Windows, Linux, macOS	NA	Free
Fiddler	Cross-platform	Free trial available for your desired fiddler tool.	Get quote for your desired fiddler tool.
Sysinternal	Windows	NA	Free

Detailed review:

#1) AKIPS

Best for impressive Scalability

Like its contemporaries, AKIPS also grants users complete control and visibility over their network. Once deployed, you can use the software to monitor various facets of your network like traffic, device health, bandwidth usage, and performance in real-time. The software also does a good job of alerting you if a fault in the network is detected. 

AKIPS also stands out for offering extensive historical data analysis. You can use the software to unearth three years of historical data. Another area where AKIPS shines is in the scalability department. A single AKIPS server can be scaled across a million interfaces and 500 thousand flows every second. 

Features:

• Real-time monitoring
• Historical data analysis
• Robust Network Discovery
• Intelligent Polling
• Events and Reporting Dashboard.

Verdict: AKIPS is robust and versatile as far as robust network administrator tools. It is remarkably scalable, proactive, and quick to deploy. Add to that, the software facilitates strong integrations with tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack for an enhanced user experience. 

Pricing: You’ll need to contact the AKIPS team for a custom quote. A 30-day free trial is also offered upon request.

#2) Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

Best for Network Administrators.

Paessler PRTG network monitor is one of the best all-in-one packet sniffing tools around that you can use to monitor data packets. One excellent feature of this tool is that it will always provide deep insights into your entire infrastructure and network performance.

It can monitor your bandwidth and traffic and make use of different technologies like SNMP, NetFlow, WMI, network sniffing, and many more.

Features:

• Help you monitor traffic and data packets.
• Filter by IP address, by protocol, and by data type.
• Manage all your applications and get all the important info about all the applications running on your network.
• It can monitor and manage all your cloud computing services from anywhere.
• It can monitor your servers in real-time regarding availability and accessibility.

Verdict: Aside from being a sniffing tool, Paessler PRTG can work as monitoring software. This network administrator tool can monitor all your hardware components, like CPU and memory. This is the best network sniffing tool for your IT infrastructure.

Price: Paessler PRTG offers a free version. Trial version is for 30 days. The Commercial version starts at $2149.

#3) ManageEngine OpManager

Best for Real-time network monitoring.

OpManager is a fantastic tool for IT admins who wish to be privy about the performance of all components on their enterprise’s network. The software can continuously monitor both physical and virtual servers round the clock to ensure they are performing optimally.

The software’s also great at monitoring wireless devices, WAN, and storage devices. OpManager is also quite effective in visualizing your network. It does so with the help of Layer2 maps, topology maps, and 3D data floors.

Features:

• Physical and Virtual server monitoring
• WAN Monitoring
• Cisco ASI Monitoring
• Fault Management

Verdict: With OpManager, you get an integrated network administrator that features real-time network monitoring capabilities. The software’s ideal for getting in-depth insights into the most vulnerable areas on a network.

Price: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise editions available. Contact for a quote.

Read our ManageEngine OpManager Detailed Review

#4) NinjaOne

Best for RMM, Endpoint, and Patch management.

As a network administrator, NinjaOne offers a comprehensive suite of tools… all of which combined grant you greater control and visibility over your network. Once deployed, you’ll be able to monitor and manage all of your client’s devices, servers, virtual machines, etc., from a centralized dashboard. You get to monitor these devices in real-time.

Alerting is another area where NinjaOne shines. You are immediately notified if any device or element on your network is inflicted with an issue. This allows tech and IT teams to immediately remediate the issue before it can do any further damage. You can also count on NinjaOne to automatically patch any OS vulnerability detected with the utmost precision. 

Features:

• Endpoint Task Automation
• Auto-remediation
• Secure remote Access
• Self-Service Portal
• Automated Patching

Verdict: Quick to implement, easy to use, and highly scalable, NinjaOne is a network administrator tool designed for the modern age where remote work has become the norm. It does a fine job at establishing secure remote access and automatically patching issues. 

Price: NinjaOne adheres to a pay-per-device model. Contact for a custom quote.

#5) Perimeter 81

 Best for Small to Large Businesses and Security Experts.

There is a lot we can think of that makes Perimeter 81 a worthy tool on this list. It is a cloud-based software that allows users to manage and secure their network with a few simple clicks. The software adheres to a multi-layered security model that aims to make network access simple and safe for both on-site and remote users.

The software is also incredibly easy to deploy. It will barely take you minutes to have the software configured, set up, and running. The visibility and control you get from Perimeter 81 is also unlike anything we’ve seen from tools like it.

Features:

• Segment and isolate network access to reduce a network’s attack surface
• Create custom access roles with authentication enforced via individual providers
• Deploy multiple major encryption protocols like WireGuard, OpenVPN, etc.
• Get greater visibility over your organization’s network infrastructure with seamless integrations.
• Device Posture Check

Verdict: With Perimeter 81, you get to protect traffic, view endpoints, create custom, scalable network access policies, and integrate security across all cloud and local resources via a single unified platform. Easy to deploy and set up, this is definitely one of the best network administrating tools a business could ask for.

Price:

• Essentials Plan: $8 per user per month
• Premium Plan: $12 per user per month
• Premium Plus: $16 per user per month
• Custom enterprise plans are also available.

#6) NordLayer

Best for real-time network visibility and robust threat prevention.

NordLayer combines the best of network and security features to ensure optimal protection of business data, resources, and data on one’s network. NordLayer distinguishes itself from other tools of its kind by offering a relatively more adaptable solution. This solution does a good job isolating threats when they occur to minimize damage to the network as much as possible.

Features:

• Network Segmentation
• Compliance Assurance
• Identity and Access Management
• Secure Access Management
• Remote Access VPN

Verdict: As a robust network security tool, NordLayer is quite effective in reducing threat exposure and delivering comprehensive network protection. Being both cost-effective and scalable, this is one of the best network administrators currently out there.

Price: NordLayer comes with 3 plans, which are as follows:

• Basic: $7/user per month
• Advanced: $9/user per month
• Custom pricing plan

#7) Wireshark

Best for security professionals.

Wireshark is a globally accepted network protocol analyzer. It is one of the best network administrator tools that gives you deep insight into the complete network operations. This tool is widely popular and used by many commercial, non-profit organizations, government parastatals, and educational institutions.

This application came to existence through the joint efforts of volunteers that comprise networking experts around the world. This network administrator tool supports different platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many more.

Features:

• Ability to perform a deep inspection of hundreds of protocols while keep adding new protocols.
• It has a very rich VoIP analysis.
• It has the most powerful display filters when compared to other tools.
• Ability to perform live capture and offline analysis.
• Ability to browse captured network data via GUI or TTY-mode TShark utility.
• It has decryption support for protocols like IPsec, Kerberos, WEP, WPA/WPA2, and SSL/TLS.

Verdict: Wireshark output can be exported to XML, CSV or in plain text. What makes Wireshark a very good network tool is its multi-platform feature, as it can run on Windows, Linux, macOS.

Price: It is a free and open-source tool.

#8) FileZilla

Best for users or businesses with heavy file transfer task.

FileZilla is popular for its cross-platform nature. It has FTP client tool and also has a server version that supports FTP and FTPS. FileZilla server edition can support files greater than 4GB. It has the needed bandwidth to support the needs of most organizations in the world.

FileZilla is very easy to use and configure. You only need to connect to a server with the right credentials and you will be able to view your files and directories.

Further Reading => Network Hub vs Network Switch

Features:

• Very easy to use and configure.
• FileZilla is available in more than one language.
• It is cross-platform and supports many operating systems
• It has a network configuration wizard that can bring you to speed with configuration.
• It supports the transfer of large files greater than 4GB.
• It has a powerful site manager and a transfer queue.

Verdict: FileZilla is highly rated as the top pick among other cross-platform secure FTP solutions available in the world. FileZilla is the right tool when conducting FTPS or FTP file transfers. Another feature of this tool is that it can be installed and configured quickly and makes the use of the tool very instant. It supports many operating systems like Windows, Linux, Mac OS and many more.

Price: It is a free and open-source tool.

#9) Clonezilla

Best for small and large enterprises with high load of disk cloning.

Clonezilla is one great tool you can use for your disk imaging and system cloning and it is an open-source application. Clonezilla is a very good partition and disk imaging software that can quickly help with system deployment, backup and recovery.

There are three types of Clonezilla, the Clonezilla live is good for single backup and restore, the Clonezilla lite server, or Clonezilla SE is best for large deployment of over 40+ computers at the same time. This software can save and restore only used blocks in the hard disk, which invariably increases the clone efficiency.

Features:

• Clonezilla supports many file systems.
• It can use one image to restore to multiple local devices.
• It supports Unattended mode.
• You can encrypt your image on Clonezilla.
• It supports multi-cast which you can use for massive cloning.
• The Clonezilla lite server supports Bittorrent.
• The AES-256 encryption you find in Clonezilla can be used to secure data access, storage, and transfer.
• The hard drive support MBR and GPT as partition formats.

Verdict: Clonezilla is a free application for everyone to use and it is an open-source disk partition and image cloning program. This software can easily take care of your system backups, full drive clones, system deployments, and many other tasks you want to carry out on your system.

Price: It is a free and open-source tool.

#10) Notepad++

Best for developers.

Notepad++ is a free and open-source application that is used for text and code editor and it’s an application that was developed to replace Notepad and it supports many languages.

Features:

• Notepad++ is written in C++.
• It makes use of pure Win32 API and STL.
• Notepad++ can optimize many routines.
• It supports many programming languages.
• It supports syntax highlighting for programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, and others.

Verdict: Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor that supports around 80 programming languages and the tabbed editing interface allows working on multiple tasks in a single window. Notepad++ is available under GPL and distributed as free software globally.

Price: It is a free and open-source tool.

#11) Fiddler

Best for developers and security professionals.

Fiddler is one of the free web debugging proxies for any browsers we have in the world. This tool is excellent when you use an application that makes a server request and you want to troubleshoot.

But note that Fiddler does not capture HTTPS requests, but you will need to do some little configuration for this to happen. In order to enable the HTTP capturing, go to TOOLS – OPTIONS — HTTPS — check Capture HTTPS and Decrypt options.

Features:

• It supports any client-server platform.
• It can record traffic and playback.
• It is used to decrypt HTTPS requests.
• It can manipulate web sessions.
• It can perform load testing with compression.

Verdict: We have so many networks sniffing tools around, but none can be compared to the full visibility offered by Fiddler. As the name state, Fiddler can help you fiddle with the network stack. Fiddler is one application readily and easily usable and it’s a web debugging proxy for many browsers and systems.

Price: Free trial and Paid.

#12) Sysinternals Suite

Best for System Administrators.

[image source]

The Sysinternals Suite is now a tool that is now managed by Microsoft and it combines all the Sysinternals troubleshooting tools into a single file.

With the Sysinternals Autoruns, you can view all the programs that are configured to start immediately after the windows load.

The Sysinternals Process Explorer, which is another version of Task Manager, can show any info about the programs currently running on your PC, like the number of resources these programs are consuming.

With the Sysinternals Process Monitor, you can zoom in on a particular application. This tool will help you keep a log of issues on your systems like crashing, registry, hard disk, and many others. It can help you figure out the root cause of a particular problem and proffer a solution.

With the Sysinternals RootkitRevealer, which is a simple malware-hunting tool that can help to monitor your computer network connections in real-time.

Features:

• It helps to display a detailed process and system information.
• Capture system events and the root causes of a system issue.
• Verify digital signatures of files and running programs.
• It can help with the Inspection of permissions on files and services and many others.
• It can help to monitor any security events across your network.

Verdict: Sysinternals Suite is a PC monitoring and troubleshooting tool. Some of these tools can only be understood by experts while some can even be understood by a novice. This Sysinternals suite is one of the best Windows troubleshooting utilities in the world and it is very important that every network administrator should know how to use these tools.

Price: Free

#13) Nagios XI

Best for IT Infrastructure Managers.

Nagios XI is a network administrator that can help with monitoring all mission-critical infrastructure components in your organization like the applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, network infrastructure, and many more.

It also has the capacity to integrate third-party add-ons that can improve its capacity. It is one of the network administrator tools that are very easy to use.

Features:

• Nagios XI makes use of the powerful Nagios Core 4 monitoring engine, which helps with efficiency and scalable monitoring.
• it has a dashboard that provides a customizable high-level overview of various services and devices.
• Advanced graphs where you can view network incidents and resolve them quickly before any major incident.
• Configuration Wizard that can quickly bring you up to speed with installation and setup.
• Full infrastructure management system.

Verdict: Nagios XI should be an integral part of any organization’s infrastructure. It notifies you of a service outage and it gets fixed before the end-user gets to notice the issue. It is one of the easiest and cheapest network administrator tools that has many features.

Price: Free trial and Paid.

#14) DataDog

Best for cloud-centric organization

Datadog is one of the best monitoring and analytics tool for Network Administrators and DevOps teams. The tool can help you determine performance metrics and help to monitor all the events happening on-premise and cloud. This app is one of the best tools you can use to monitor servers, databases, and other services.

Features:

• This is an application that can see across the entire system, apps, and services.
• It will give you full visibility and deep insight into modern applications.
• This application can analyze the logs for troubleshooting.
• This application can help to correlate the frontend performance with business impact.
• It provides a real-time alert on critical issues

Verdict: Datadog is a superb network and service monitoring service for even a midsized company. If you can overcome the initial setup, then you are set for a whole lot of benefits as the application has a lot to offer, like the integrations, dashboards, and flexible alerts.

Price: 14 days free trial and Paid version.

#15) SoftPerfect Network Scanner

Best for Network Administrators and Security Professionals

This is a scanner that is fast and highly configurable IPv4/IPv6, which can streamline your network support processes. It has an interface that is well designed, portable, and lightweight with different options and advanced features, which make it stand out among others.

Features:

• This app supports both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing.
• It can perform a ping sweep and used to display live devices.
• A perfect tool to detect hardware and devices MAC addresses.
• Discover both writable and hidden folders.
• Retrieve any system information via WMI, service manager, and others.
• You can use it to scan and listen to ports like TCP and UDP.
• It can retrieve any currently logged-on users and configured users on the network.

Verdict: Whether you are a network administrator, system administrator, or just a general user, this is the tool for you. SoftPerfect Network Scanner is an invaluable tool that can ping computers, scan ports, and can retrieve any information you need about your network. It is one tool that is very good to scan for remote services, registry, and many others.

Price: Unlimited trial duration and Commercial.

#16) PuTTY

Best for Network Security Professionals.

PuTTY is licensed under the MIT License and it’s free for all to use and open source to volunteers who support the app daily. This network administrator tool can act as a terminal emulator which has clients for the SSH and also Telnet.

This tool is very useful if you want to have access to an account on a Unix system. It has support for both Windows and Unix systems.

Features:

• Supports Unicode.
• It has control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version.
• It has two command-line SCP and SFTP clients called pscp and psftp.
• It supports IPv6.
• Supports public-key authentication.
• Supports 3DES, AES, DES, and many more.
• It has local serial port connections.
• It has control over port forwarding with SSH.

Verdict: This is the best tool for network administrators that always need a secure remote tunnel to a system. It is one of the best tools that the open-source community has provided and it is equally used by small and large businesses.

Price: Free and open source

#17) SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Best for Network and System Administrators.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a multi-vendor network monitoring that can scale and expand when the network needs to increase. With this network administrator tool, you don’t need to install different servers for different applications. It is easy to install, maintain, and can easily help to monitor your NOC.

Features:

• Network Performance Monitor has advanced network troubleshooting for your On-premises, Private, Hybrid, and Public cloud services.
• It has complete and comprehensive network fault monitoring and performance management.
• It is an application that is always available in real-time.
• It can scale as network needs increase.
• It has the ability for advanced alerting.

Verdict: This tool was definitely developed by network and system engineers who know the length they can go in managing our IT environments. It is a tool that has a deep root and connection with the IT community. A very effective, accessible, and easy-to-use Network Administrator Tool.

Price: Free trial and Paid.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

We have now seen some of the best network tools that are readily available online. What is important is to know the best that will suit your environment and to know which one will work best in proffering solutions to any current issue you may be encountering.

Be it network monitoring, network sniffers, service management log, device management, traffic control, access control, and many other features available, there is always a tool that will stand out for you the most.