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Enthusiasts and small offices want more information about their network and require additional features and capabilities that could overwhelm a typical home user. Pure Networks offers Network Magic for Mac as an add-on to Windows versions of the product to simplify the extremely challenging task of integrating different computer environments into one seamless network. All Network Magic 4. Pure Networks provides networking software that enables consumers and small businesses to enjoy digital technology that simply works and simply connects.
First on our list is a tool from SolarWinds, a company that makes some of the best network administration tools. Its flagship product, the Network Performance Monitor is known to be one of the very best network bandwidth monitors and, as such, it could be considered as an alternative to Network Magic. The bundle includes many dedicated troubleshooting tools.
Tools like DNS Analyzer and Traceroute can be used to perform network diagnostics and help resolve complex network issues quickly. For security-oriented administrators, some of the included tools can be used to simulate attacks and help identify vulnerabilities.
It includes several tools to monitor your devices and raise alerts for availability or health issues. In addition, you can use some of the included tools for configuration management and log consolidation. There are simply too many tools included with this product to review them all.
Here are some of the most important and useful:. With so many included tools, this is the Swiss Army knife of network administrators. It covers most of the functionalities of Network Magic and then some. This is not a tool for home users, though.
Enthusiasts and small offices want more information about their network and require additional features and capabilities that could overwhelm a typical home user. No provision of this Agreement may be waived, modified or superseded except by a written instrument accepted by Belkin and you. In this respect, Network Magic provided too little too late. All rights reserved. Spiceworks Inventory runs on the cloud but requires a program to be downloaded on your computer. Since there is no section in Network Magic where you can disable the Buy Now pop-ups, the only way to get rid of these pop-ups is to uninstall the software.
It is really meant for bigger networks and its got a price that matches its target audience. Considering the amazing plethora of tools that are part of the bundle, it is certainly well worth the investment. And since a day free trial is available , your best bet might be to give it a test run and see for yourself all it can do for you. It can be used to monitor usage and performance of network devices, network circuits, servers and much more.
The capabilities of this tool are expandable by using PRTG sensors which can be thought of as extensions or add-ons except that they are supplied with the tool.
There are some sensors available covering various things such as DNS name resolution or Microsoft Exchange email delivery, just to name a few. Paessler claims you could be running within a couple of minutes.
Part of this is due to its auto-discovery feature which will discover and map all of your infrastructures. This initial scan creates a baseline against which future measurements obtained through monitoring can be compared. The tool uses several monitoring methods. First, the device monitor uses SNMP to read operational metrics from your equipment.
The PRTG Network Monitor also includes alerts which can be triggered when some monitored element is out if its normal operating range. You could also be notified whenever new equipment connects to the network as you would be able to see unusual activity, giving the tool some crude intrusion detection capabilities. This product is available in two versions.
The free version is full-featured but it is limited to sensors with each monitored parameter counting as one sensor. For example, if you monitor two interfaces on a router, it will count as two sensors. Any extra sensor, as described above counts as well. For more than sensors, you need to purchase a license.
You can also get a free, sensor-unlimited and full-featured day trial version. The Spiceworks IP Scanner is a cloud-based service. The system requires a local agent to be downloaded and run onto your computer. This tool will give you the basic network discovery and device inventory functions that were available in Network Magic. It allows any user to filter and sort the list of connected devices or to optionally export the status report to a CSV file for easy analysis using external tools. It offers what looks like a simple interface for managing all this, though I should note that printer sharing only works with the list of printers that Apple officially supports and provides drivers for right in Mac OS X i.
Still, Network Magic looks like one of the easiest networking tools I've seen in a while, and perhaps if its popularity among Mac users grows over time, licensing can become more fair for both operating systems. Buyer's Guide. Log in. Sign up.