Paessler makes Network Monitor faster

If networks have to be faster than ever, it stands to reason that network monitoring applications had better be zippier as well.

To that end Paessler AG said this week it has overhauled its network monitoring application to be quicker and show data more clearly.

PRTG Network Monitor v. 13 has new Single Page Application (SPA) architecture based on HTML5 for a faster Web experience, the company said, allowing network administrators to view and digest more information on a single page.

There’s also an improved user interface which Paessler believes presents performance data cleaner and easier to understand than previous versions with fewer clicks needed.

The improved design allows both the sensor and device pages to offer more information at a single glance, the company said.

One way things are faster is that tasks now show in pop-up layers within the browser instead of loading new pages. Users can change the priority and favourite status of objects with just one click.

The updated version uses pure AJAX, so reloading and reparsing of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), HTML and JavaScript have been reduced, the company said. The new Web interface will rarely load complete pages; instead, page elements will only refresh when necessary.

Among the new features is a new heuristic calculation, which identifies sensors that show similar behaviour helping the user find interconnections in the network. For example, the company said, an admin might now be aware that port X on router A has similar bandwidth consumption compared to port Y on server B.

“This knowledge can lead to better planning of network resources and help the network administrator to detect unexpected influences and interactions between systems, which could be the result of security leaks,” says Paessler.