13 BEST Network Diagnostic Tools (2023 Update)

By : Lawrence Williams Lawrence Williams
Hours Updated

Network Diagnostics Tools are software applications and utilities that enable you to identify network issues and their probable causes. It helps you to perform multiple network operations such as network performance monitoring, server monitoring, switch monitoring, etc.

These software tools give you details about the network like latency values and the hostname of the device. Many such applications can also help to identify routing issues when you have more than one WiFi network connection.

Following is a handpicked list of Top Network Diagnostics Tools, with their website links. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) software.

Top Pick
SolarWinds Network Diagnostic Tool
SolarWinds Network Diagnostic Tool

SolarWinds is a tool that quickly analyzes and troubleshoots wireless network faults, performance, and availability issues remotely. This application provides you real-time alerts that help you to reduce network downtime.

Learn More

Best Network Diagnostic & Troubleshooting Tools & Software

Name Supported Platforms Link
👍 Network Diagnostic Tool Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
👍 ManageEngine OpManager Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Learn More
Paessler Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
Site24x7’s Network Monitoring Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
Datadoghq Windows, iOS, and Android. Learn More

1) Network Diagnostic Tool

Network Diagnostic Tool is a tool that quickly analyzes and troubleshoots wireless network faults, performance, and availability issues remotely. This application provides you real-time alerts that help you to reduce network downtime.

#1 Top Pick
Network Diagnostic Tool
Network Diagnostic Tool
5.0

Quickly resolve network connectivity issues

Reduce network downtime

Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux

Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial

Visit Network Diagnostic

It helps you to find the root cause of the issue and determine whether it is in the application or network. SolarWinds is one of the best remote monitoring software to perform network analysis and evaluate critical paths.

Visit Network Diagnostic

2) ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is a holistic network monitoring and management solution that focuses on instant fault identification and resolution. It supports more than 450 vendors and 10,000 device types including servers, routers, switches, virtual devices and wireless devices.

#2
ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager
4.9

OpManager has a root cause analysis feature to track down network issues

All of this combined with its advanced discovery, alerting

Supported platforms: Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial

Visit ManageEngine

Features:

  • OpManager has a root cause analysis feature to track down network issues and a workflow automation feature which automates basic network troubleshooting.
  • OpManager’s network troubleshooting and diagnostics tool kit includes:

    • – Ping (SNMP/Proxy/ICMP)
    – Traceroute
    – Ipconfig/ifconfig
    – Netstat, Nslookup
    – Pathping/MTR

  • All of this combined with its advanced discovery, alerting and reporting features makes OpManager the comprehensive network monitoring tool.

Visit ManageEngine

3) Paessler

Paessler is a diagnostics software that can scan network segments by pinging defined IP ranges. This tool monitors IT infrastructure using technologies like SNMP, WMI, Sniffing, REST APIs, SQL and others. This network testing tool can scan network segments by pinging defined IP ranges.

Paessler

It can help you to create web pages with up-to-date monitoring data in the desired format. This network testing tool alerts you when it sees warnings or unusual metrics in your network infrastructure. It provides a web interface that is suitable for real-time network troubleshooting issues.

Visit Paessler >>

4) Site24x7’s Network Monitoring

Site24x7 provides extensive network monitoring features that support diagnosis of critical network issues, fault detection, and health monitoring across various network elements. With Site24x7, you gain deep observability into vital parameters of your network resources, enabling you to detect and address potential issues before they impact your network’s performance. You can access all these features conveniently from a unified dashboard, which simplifies network monitoring and troubleshooting. Within the same tool, you can also monitor network availability, troubleshoot performance problems, pinpoint traffic troubles (NetFlow), and detect issues in cloud-managed devices (Cisco Meraki) while also managing unauthorized or unapproved device configuration changes (NCM).

Site24x7

Features:

  • View devices color-coded according to status on the health dashboard as well as in maps.
  • Automatic network device discovery based on SNMP.
  • Receive instant notifications whenever a device generates an SNMP trap or if there’s a status change.
  • Configure alerts via email, SMS, push notification, and other third-party applications.
  • Out-of-the-box support for more than 11,000 device models from more than 450 vendors.
  • View device and interface-level performance insights in tables, charts, graphs, dashboards, and reports.
  • Receive alerts through SMS messages, emails, voice calls, and push notifications.
  • Integrate smoothly with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and more.

Visit Site24x7 >>

5) Datadoghq

Datadoghq is a tool that can monitor end-to-end visibility into the WiFi network. It allows you to monitor your network architecture alongside the application, DNS performance, and infrastructure for faster troubleshooting. This application provides you insights into the performance of bare metal devices like firewalls, switches, and routers.

Datadoghq

It enables you to view communication between services, cloud regions, and resources. This network troubleshooting tool can also track WiFi network metrics like latency and TCP retransmits. It can assess DNS server health with request volume, error code metrics, and response time.

Download Link: https://www.datadoghq.com/product/network-monitoring/

6) Dynatrace

Dynatrace is a tool that enables you to monitor WiFi network performance without any hassle. This application makes sure that you get high-quality process communications over the network. It can analyze your WiFi network traffic on the host and process.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace provides you a clear picture of metrics for CPU, disk, memory, and WiFi network health. It can be used to see how your components interact with each other.

Download Link: https://www.dynatrace.com/platform/network-monitoring/

7) Wireshark

Wireshark is a tool that analyzes WiFi network protocol with minimal effort. It has a rich feature set that enables you to find network performance issues live and perform offline analysis. This application can capture files compressed with gzip.

Wireshark

Wireshark can be used to read live data from Ethernet, Bluetooth, USB, etc. The output of this WiFi network troubleshooting tool can be exported to CSV, plain text, or XML formats. This network testing tool can run on Windows, macOS, Solaris, Linux, and many other operating systems.

Download Link: https://www.wireshark.org/

8) Nexthink

Nexthink is a script that helps you to obtain information about the current network configuration and connection. It enables you to perform connectivity tests using ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) protocol.

Nexthink

It can clear the DNS cache and helps you to resolve some potential network infrastructure problems. This application can restart the Nexthink service on a device that is recently connected to VPN to get up-to-date information.

Download Link: https://www.nexthink.com/library/network-management/

9) PerfSONAR

PerfSONAR is a network measurement toolkit designed to provide federated coverage of paths and establish end-to-end usage expectations. You can identify and isolate problems as they happen, making the role of supporting network users.

It provides an interface that helps you to schedule measurements of the network and storage of data in uniform formats. This application offers scalable methods to retrieve data and generate visualizations.

PerfSONAR

It helps you to identify and isolate network problems to make the role of supporting engineer easier. This network testing software contains a set of tools that can be used to perform network analysis and measure packet loss and delay.

Download Link: https://www.perfsonar.net/

10) Ping

Ping is a Windows operating system utility that helps you to determine latency, round trip time, and network packet loss. It provides you network problem that needs to be addressed.

Ping

This command can also be used to check the network connection speed. Ping is the basic utility when you begin your troubleshooting process.

11) Traceroute

Traceroute is a network troubleshooting command that enables you to know about network devices between one point to another. It gives you extra data like latency values and the hostname of the gadgets. This network troubleshooting tool can also help to identify routing issues when you have more than one network connectivity.

Traceroute

Traceroute network troubleshooting command enables you to view the route and measure the delay of network packets. It will give you the details of hops between both the source and destination devices.

12) Ipconfig

Ipconfig (Internet Protocol Configuration) is a utility that can report IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, default gateways, and subnets for all gateways on a computer.

Ipconfig

This functionality can also be used to manage IP addresses assigned to PCs that are currently running. You can write commands without additional parameters to identify your current Internet protocol address.

13) Nslookup

Nslookup is a good utility for locating the IP associated with a domain name and checking to see that DNS resolution is working for a host.

When you enter www.google.com into the browser, your computer queries the DNS server to find the IP attached to that hostname as shown in the following figure.

Nslookup

Nslookup helps you to find these queries and other Domain Name System servers as per your desire. This network testing tool helps you to test the DNS server for the client or your own ISP (Internet Service Provider).

14) Netstat

Netstat is a utility that is helpful on hosts or servers that run their own firewalls like Apache or SQL servers. This network troubleshooting command is very helpful to know the people who are connected to your hosts with a port number.

Netstat

It shows the total number of active connections on your PC and delivers basic statistics on all network activities.

FAQ

Network diagnostics tools are software applications and utilities that enable you to identify network performance issues and their probable causes. It helps you to perform multiple network operations such as network performance monitoring, server monitoring, switch monitoring, etc.

These software tools give you details of the network, like latency values and the hostname of the device. Many such applications can also help to identify routing issues when you have more than one network connection.

Here are some of the Best Network Diagnostic Tools:

If your Internet gets disconnected, you can call the ISP or go to the place where you get a proper WiFi connection. However, the scenario is different when this happens to a large business network connection.

The only thing here you can do is to wait for the Internet or cloud service to get back on track. At this time, network troubleshooting tools help you to identify the potential cause of the network failure and helps to fix the network issues. Therefore, it is good to have knowledge of such network diagnostics tools that are used by engineers and network admins.

Here are the features of Network Diagnostic Software:

  • These applications help users to find the root cause of the network issue and determine whether it is in the application, network, or WiFi connection.
  • It can scan large business wireless network segments by pinging defined IP ranges.
  • Network Diagnostic Software provides users insights into the performance of bare metal devices like firewalls, switches, and routers.
  • These software tools are widely used by network performance testers to see how network components interact with each other within the infrastructure.
  • Enables users to perform connection tests using ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) protocol.
  • Network diagnostic software can clear the DNS cache and helps you to resolve some potential network problems.
  • Users can identify and solve network performance issues with ease.
  • Allows Network performance tester to check the Internet connection speed and bandwidth.
  • It helps to identify routing issues when users have more than one Wi-Fi network connection.

Network latency is the time taken for data or a request to go from the source to the destination. It is measured in milliseconds. The closer is the latency to zero, the better it reflects the performance of your website.

Some common warnings of high latency include:

  • Your data takes a long time to send. For example, an email with a large attachment.
  • Servers or web-based applications are slow.
  • Websites do not load.

You should not use Network Monitoring tools when diagnosing small and simple networks as these tools take lots of time to analyze even small IT infrastructure’s performance and generate the final report.

Here are the main network troubleshooting command:

  • Ping
  • Ipconfig
  • Nslookup
  • Netstat
  • Traceroute

Network diagnostic tools scan and search all available network paths, interfaces, and ports to find network issues. These software tools also provide insights into basic network availability and performance statistics in order to fix network issues.

To begin with network analytics, you should know the following aspects:

  • The data sources (IoT, web apps, and others) to be analyzed.
  • Find out the common problems in the network.
  • Check the changes that are anticipated and created new issues.
  • Find the tools that are already in use and aspects of data analytics these applications cannot handle.
  • Know whether vendors added new capabilities to the software you are using, for example, machine learning and AI.

Consider the following factors before selecting a network diagnostic tool:

  • Network troubleshooting software should be able to provide real-time performance monitoring and visualization.
  • The cost involved in training employees on the tool
  • Network troubleshooting software should be customizable to each user’s specific roles
  • Consider the network security options offered by the software
  • You need to check the product price matches your budget or not
  • Product features meet your requirements or not
  • Network performance testing software should provide integration with other software tools
  • You need to select a tool that fulfills the requirements of small size as well large size IT infrastructures

Here are the six steps of the Troubleshooting Process:

Step 1) Identify the problem

Step 2) Guess the possible cause of the issue

Step 3) Explore the system to cross-check your idea

Step 4) Find the error, make a plan, and implement a solution

Step 5) Check the solution that worked and change procedures to prevent the problem from occurring again

Step 6) Document the problem, the solution, and recommendations for procedural changes

There are many online tools that help you to test your access point. One of the best online applications is the Speedtest which is developed by Google. You just have to open a website and hit “CHECK NOW” button to check the speed of your broadband connection.

The network routers cause increased latency and drop packets. It can cause performance problems and intermittent failures. This situation can also cause traffic to pass through an unnecessarily long path and therefore it increases network latency.

Here are the most common issues that affect network performance:

  • Network device faults
  • Power source problems
  • Defective cable connectors
  • System overloading
  • Security software
  • QoS (Quality of Service) prioritization
  • Network cable faults
  • Incompatible network settings on the device
  • Addressing issues
  • Intruder or hacker activity
  • Occurrence of malware

Best Network Diagnostic & Troubleshooting Tools & Software

Name Supported Platforms Link
👍 Network Diagnostic Tool Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
👍 ManageEngine OpManager Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Learn More
Paessler Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
Site24x7’s Network Monitoring Windows, macOS, Linux Learn More
Datadoghq Windows, iOS, and Android. Learn More
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