Last Updated on May 25, 2024 by Jhonni Jets

Monitoring network traffic and system resources is essential for maintaining server and network health and performance. Linux offers many powerful yet easy-to-use network monitoring tools. This article will discuss 7 of the best open source network monitoring apps available for Linux systems.

Nagios

Nagios is one of the most popular network monitoring solutions for Linux. It allows monitoring servers, switches, applications and services for problems like server load, storage usage, latency and connectivity. Nagios can monitor network infrastructure through SNMP, HTTP checks and plugins. It alerts admins through emails and web notifications if anything goes wrong. Nagios is highly customizable and scalable to monitor even large and complex networks. It is free and open source with an active community providing extensive documentation and support resources.

Zabbix

Zabbix is another full-featured network monitoring software capable of monitoring different network parameters, servers and network devices. It uses an agent-based architecture to remotely monitor metrics like CPU usage, memory, disk space and more. Admins can configure triggers to get alerts whenever any monitored values exceed predefined thresholds. Zabbix offers a web-based frontend for easy management. Additional scripts and checks can be added through a Plugin architecture. Being open source and free, Zabbix is suitable for monitoring large and complex networks in enterprises and data centers.

Cacti

Cacti is a polished open source network monitoring tool focused on system resource monitoring through SNMP. It includes default templates for monitoring different network devices and servers. Admins can graph metrics over time like bandwidth usage, server load, RAM usage etc. Cacti works on PHP/MySQL and has an easy-to-use web interface. New devices and metrics can be added flexibly. It can be integrated with external apps through its API and supports notifications. Cacti scales well for mid-sized networks in small businesses and departments.

Icinga

Icinga is a stable, feature-rich and reliable open source monitoring tool evolved from Nagios. It offers easy configuration, scalability, robustness and web-based interfaces for viewing alerts and reports. Icinga can monitor servers, network devices, websites, cloud infrastructure and applications for availability and performance. Plugins help monitoring custom metrics. It supports notification through emails, SMS and other channels. Icinga offers enterprise-grade features like load balancing, high availability and role-based access control. The vibrant community provides great support.

LibreNMS

LibreNMS is another easy to deploy and use network monitoring application especially suitable for smaller networks. It focuses on monitoring through SNMP and provides automatic device discovery. Key metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, bandwidth usage, interface traffic etc. are tracked out of the box. LibreNMS offers beautiful web interface for device and network visualization along with reporting and alerting features. Being lightweight, it can run even on low powered machines. Regular updates add new features and compatibility making it a full-fledged yet simple option.

Observium

Observium is an open source network monitoring system primarily developed for monitoring networks and infrastructure through SNMP. It autodiscovers and maps out the network topology. Observium offers insight into network health through performance metrics gathered from various network devices and servers. The web interface provides real-time and historical graphs for easy tracking. Admins can configured customized alerts and notifications. Being agentless, Observium is easy to set up and maintain. It integrates Discovery, monitoring and reporting capabilities in a single package.

Netdata

Netdata is a special type of network monitoring tool focused on real-time performance and bottleneck detection. It collects metrics with high granularity from operating systems and applications. The metrics include CPU, memory, disk, network, I/O and process usage. Netdata visualizes the metrics through an interactive web interface with real-time charts updating every second. This helps identifyresource bottlenecks and performance issues rapidly.Being very lightweight, Netdata can run directly on servers without impacting performance.

Conclusion

Linux offers many powerful open source network monitoring tools which help administrators maintain optimal network performance and health. The free tools discussed here like Nagios, Zabbix, Cacti, Icinga and others provide comprehensive features for servers, network infrastructure and services monitoring suitable for organizations of different sizes. Regular maintenance, timely updates and community support keep these monitoring solutions robust and relevant for changing network environments.