Tired of unexpected network downtime?
You’re likely jumping between scattered tools, trying to diagnose persistent issues that disrupt your operations and frustrate your end-users.
The real problem is how much time is wasted on manual diagnostics. This keeps your team reactive instead of proactive against future issues.
Every minute your network underperforms, it costs your company money and chips away at its reputation. That pressure to find the root cause is intense.
The right software can completely change this dynamic. It helps you achieve comprehensive network visibility and get ahead of problems before they escalate.
In this article, I’m going to review the best network troubleshooting software to help you find a platform that ends the guesswork for good.
You’ll find solutions that deliver rapid root cause analysis and help you confidently assure uptime, meeting your most critical IT performance goals.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wireshark → | All organization sizes | |
| 2 | Paessler → | Midsize SaaS & MSPs | |
| 3 | Nagios → | Midsize SaaS companies | |
| 4 | ManageEngine → | Midsize SaaS & MSPs | |
| 5 | LogicMonitor → | Large distributed enterprises |
1. Wireshark
Struggling with unclear network performance issues?
Wireshark offers powerful capabilities to dissect your network traffic, allowing you to debug and analyze with precision. This means you can finally identify bottlenecks.
This powerful network protocol analyzer provides deep inspection of hundreds of protocols. It allows you to interactively browse traffic running on your network. The result is faster issue resolution.
Here’s how to gain complete network visibility.
Wireshark helps you understand traffic patterns and optimize network performance, leading to confident network protection. It allows you to easily capture and interactively browse network traffic directly.
You can gain insights into network protocols with ease, helping your team troubleshoot issues faster. This comprehensive network analysis tool helps protect and optimize your network. Additionally, resources like a user guide, certifications, and a vibrant community are available for support.
It’s free, open-source, and trusted by millions worldwide, making it accessible to any organization. Wireshark is supported by an active community of over 100,000 contributors, offering a strong support system.
It’s time to resolve network mysteries.
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Key features:
- Deep Packet Inspection: Capture and interactively browse network traffic, offering detailed insight into hundreds of network protocols to debug issues.
- Comprehensive Tools: Access tools like OUI lookup, WPA PSK Generator, and IPv4/IPv6 Test, assisting you in thorough network analysis and troubleshooting.
- Active Community Support: Benefit from a vibrant community of over 100,000 contributors, documentation, and certifications for ongoing learning and assistance.
Wireshark features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Wireshark stands out as a leading solution for best network troubleshooting software, empowering your team to gain deep insights into network traffic. Its comprehensive analysis, open-source nature, and strong community support make it an invaluable tool for identifying bottlenecks and optimizing network performance with confidence.
2. Paessler
Tired of network troubleshooting headaches?
Paessler PRTG offers comprehensive visibility into your entire IT infrastructure. This means you can monitor everything from network devices and traffic to servers and applications, ensuring nothing goes unnoticed.
This unified approach helps you avoid incomplete diagnostics and resolve issues before they disrupt your operations.
Here’s your all-in-one network solution.
Paessler PRTG simplifies monitoring, helping you keep your infrastructure optimized and running smoothly. You get awesome maps and dashboards, flexible alerts, and multiple user interfaces for complete oversight.
This allows you to identify and address bottlenecks quickly, preventing overloads and downtime. Plus, with capabilities like distributed monitoring and in-depth reporting, you gain the insights needed to maintain peak performance and meet your IT goals. Paessler also offers specialized solutions for large enterprises and hosted options, adapting to your specific needs.
Your uptime is assured.
Key features:
- Comprehensive Monitoring: Gain complete visibility by monitoring all your systems, devices, traffic, and applications, detecting issues before they impact your business.
- Intuitive Dashboards & Alerts: Utilize powerful maps and customizable dashboards with flexible alerting to quickly understand your network status and respond promptly to incidents.
- Scalable & Flexible Solutions: Choose from PRTG Network Monitor for small to midsize needs, PRTG Enterprise Monitor for large infrastructures, or PRTG Hosted Monitor for cloud convenience.
Paessler features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Paessler PRTG stands out as an excellent choice for best network troubleshooting software, especially for midsize SaaS and MSPs, due to its ability to provide complete IT infrastructure visibility. With over 500,000 happy customers and 25+ years of experience, it simplifies monitoring, helping you reduce downtime and achieve your IT performance goals.
3. Nagios
Tired of chasing network issues manually?
Nagios helps you troubleshoot and proactively alert on your infrastructure in a streamlined environment. This means you can finally move beyond scattered toolsets and incomplete diagnostics.
This capability is crucial for midsize SaaS companies, helping you resolve incidents before they become major catastrophes.
It’s time for comprehensive network visibility.
Nagios provides advanced graphs for trending and capacity planning, allowing your organization to anticipate and plan for necessary upgrades. Here’s how it ensures efficiency: its powerful Nagios Core 4 monitoring engine offers efficient, scalable monitoring for your entire IT infrastructure.
Individualized queries and reports give you the ability to monitor specific application usage, while comprehensive dashboards provide a high-level overview. Additionally, you get real-time alerts when abnormal activity occurs or bandwidth thresholds are exceeded, ensuring you have continuous log data from all servers. This helps you analyze and solve problems as they arise.
Minimize downtime and meet your IT performance goals.
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Key features:
- Real-time alerting: Monitor network devices, log data, and flow data with customizable dashboards to receive immediate alerts on any issues.
- Comprehensive visibility: Gain deep insights into network traffic, bandwidth, and overall health through advanced visualizations and specialized views.
- Centralized management: Visualize multiple Nagios instances and solutions on one screen, even across distributed environments, simplifying oversight for your team.
Nagios features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re seeking the best network troubleshooting software that prioritizes robust monitoring, detailed analysis, and proactive alerting, Nagios is a strong contender. Its ability to monitor virtually anything network-connected, coupled with real-time alerts and customizable dashboards, positions it as a go-to solution for assuring your uptime.
4. ManageEngine
Is network uptime a constant battle for your team?
ManageEngine provides enterprise-grade solutions to monitor, manage, and secure your entire IT infrastructure. This means you can finally gain comprehensive control.
Their IT Operations Management and Observability solution helps you monitor and manage your network, servers, and applications. This frees your team from manual troubleshooting.
Get ready to transform your IT operations.
ManageEngine’s AI-enhanced IT management solutions help you secure your business and assure high availability. This provides immediate value to your organization.
Their solutions offer observability, AIOps, and digital experience monitoring, so you can proactively identify and resolve performance issues across your network. Additionally, their Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools secure your network from cyberattacks, ensuring compliance.
Plus, with Advanced IT Analytics, you can visualize your IT data and gain AI-powered insights, correlating IT data for capacity planning and optimizing your operations. The result is a unified approach to maintaining service availability.
Assure your network’s resilience.
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Key features:
- Unified IT Operations Management: Monitor and manage your network, servers, and applications with advanced observability and AIOps capabilities, ensuring high availability.
- Security Information and Event Management: Secure your network proactively with log management, security auditing, threat detection, and response, safeguarding your digital assets.
- Advanced IT Analytics: Visualize IT data and gain actionable, AI-powered insights for IT data correlation and capacity planning, optimizing your operational efficiency.
ManageEngine features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ManageEngine stands out as an excellent choice for best network troubleshooting software, especially for midsize SaaS companies and MSPs. With features like comprehensive IT operations management, security information, and event management, it helps you achieve over 70% SLA compliance. This assures your uptime and streamlines troubleshooting processes.
5. LogicMonitor
Are network issues eating up your valuable time?
LogicMonitor offers real-time insights and automation through its agentless architecture for comprehensive, seamless monitoring.
This means you can proactively improve IT and prevent issues with SaaS-based automated monitoring, which deploys in minutes with advanced features for infrastructure, applications, and business services.
Less noise, faster answers.
LogicMonitor provides hybrid observability powered by AI, helping you get real-time insights and automation. It offers a unified platform to eliminate complexity, reducing alert noise by 90%.
The platform’s AIOps capabilities, including Edwin AI and Event Intelligence, mean you can pinpoint problems and know exactly what to do next. Additionally, you can reduce your Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) by 46% with real-time alerts and integrated logs.
Plus, LogicMonitor is easy to deploy, with automatic support, discovery, and dashboards for over 2000 types of infrastructure and applications, integrating instantly with technologies your business relies on.
Your uptime is assured.
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Key features:
- Comprehensive Monitoring: Gain real-time insights and automation for your entire IT estate, including network, server, cloud, and digital experience.
- AI-Powered Observability: Utilize Edwin AI, Event Intelligence, and dynamic thresholds to reduce alert noise and pinpoint root causes quickly.
- Seamless Integrations & Deployment: Enjoy easy deployment in minutes with automatic discovery and support for over 3000 integrations.
LogicMonitor features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: LogicMonitor is a strong contender for the best network troubleshooting software, offering a unified platform that eliminates complexity and significantly reduces MTTR. With its AI-powered features like Edwin AI, it helps IT teams like Syngenta’s proactively manage 9,000 devices across 400 global sites with limited resources.
6. Auvik
Tired of network issues and endless guesswork?
Auvik’s network observability offers complete visibility and control, often deployed in under an hour. This means you can finally see exactly what’s happening, eliminating the frustration of incomplete diagnostics.
Imagine quickly pinpointing problems because you have a live view of every device. You’ll find and fix issues faster than ever. The result: significantly reduced downtime.
Here’s how Auvik makes it happen.
Auvik provides real-time monitoring and mapping that updates within the minute, ensuring you never troubleshoot with outdated information. You get an interactive, color-coded map showing paths from switch to endpoint.
This helps you see exactly which device connects to which switch port, making root cause analysis incredibly quick. Auvik offers vendor-agnostic device compatibility with over 700 brands. Additionally, you can manage unlimited networks from one place, viewing every site on a geomap and tracking devices in a single inventory. Plus, it automates tedious tasks like documentation and configuration backups.
Fix issues before users even notice.
Key features:
- Complete Network Visibility: Auvik automatically discovers and maps your entire network infrastructure, providing real-time inventory and topology for effortless troubleshooting.
- Rapid Root Cause Analysis: Gain traffic insights, compare configurations, and utilize network path visualization to pinpoint and resolve network problems quickly.
- Automated Monitoring & Alerts: Benefit from 64+ out-of-the-box, customizable alerts and automated tasks to prevent issues and keep your network running smoothly.
Auvik features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For IT managers and technical leads dealing with scattered tools and manual troubleshooting, Auvik stands out as the best network troubleshooting software. Its comprehensive visibility, rapid issue resolution capabilities, and automation features, like saving hundreds of hours on tasks, make it an indispensable solution for assuring network uptime.
7. Kentik
Tired of network issues slowing you down?
Kentik offers network intelligence to streamline operations, providing deep flow insight and comprehensive network monitoring system (NMS) capabilities. This means you gain unparalleled visibility across your entire infrastructure, from your data center to the cloud. You can achieve 400% faster troubleshooting, leading to more efficient incident response and less toil for your team.
You need to know the answer now.
Kentik demystifies complex networks with AI, built by experts who understand every network in context. Here’s how it works: you get observability from data center to cloud to the internet, providing self-service troubleshooting for your support, NOC, and application teams. This platform offers the most accurate DDoS detection in the market, helping you detect attacks 6x faster. Additionally, Kentik integrates with your existing tools, allowing you to easily send or receive data from any source, assuring confidence in responding to network issues. The result is rapid root cause analysis, improved performance, and enhanced security with minimal effort.
While we’re discussing network solutions, understanding how to manage your software effectively is equally important.
Key features:
- Comprehensive network visibility: Gain deep insight into network performance, reliability, cost, and security across your entire infrastructure, from data center to cloud.
- AI-powered troubleshooting: Leverage built-in AI to rapidly understand root cause analysis, resolve outages, and achieve 400% faster troubleshooting.
- Advanced security and efficiency: Benefit from the most accurate DDoS detection, 6x faster detection times, and automatic peering for fewer hops and improved efficiency.
Kentik features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re looking for the best network troubleshooting software that brings comprehensive visibility, rapid root cause analysis, and robust security together, Kentik is an excellent choice. Its AI-powered capabilities and seamless integration with existing tools make it ideal for midsize SaaS companies and managed service providers seeking to minimize downtime and assure uptime.
8. ExtraHop
Is your network experiencing constant disruptions?
ExtraHop delivers complete network visibility and real-time detection, helping your team rapidly respond to incidents. This means you can anticipate network disruptions and ensure availability across your entire enterprise.
This comprehensive approach helps you overcome scattered toolsets and incomplete diagnostics, providing a unified view for faster troubleshooting and problem resolution.
Let’s dive into the solution.
ExtraHop’s RevealX platform centralizes your network insights, enhancing your IT operations and exposing every risk. It provides a modern approach to network detection and response, simplifying your security infrastructure.
You get robust packet forensics, offering scalable packet capture to troubleshoot network behavior and investigate threats faster. Additionally, the platform supports real-time decryption across over 90 protocols, including TLS/SSL 1.3, even at high speeds.
Plus, with cloud-scale machine learning, you benefit from continuous model tuning and updates. This provides higher quality detections and fewer false positives, ensuring your team focuses on legitimate threats and resolves issues efficiently to meet your uptime goals.
Your network becomes a transparent, manageable asset.
Key features:
- Complete Network Visibility: Gain full insight into your network traffic, allowing you to see every packet, device, and potential risk across your enterprise.
- Real-Time Threat Detection: Detect and investigate cyber threats instantly using machine learning-powered, context-enriched alerts that attackers cannot evade.
- Rapid Incident Response: Quickly anticipate network disruptions, troubleshoot issues, and ensure availability with tools designed for swift resolution.
ExtraHop features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ExtraHop provides comprehensive visibility and real-time detection, making it an excellent candidate for the best network troubleshooting software. Its machine learning capabilities and robust packet forensics ensure you can rapidly respond to incidents and achieve operational resilience. You can reduce cyber risk and assure your uptime.
Conclusion
Downtime just isn’t an option.
Choosing the right tool is overwhelming, especially when you’re already fighting fires. The sheer number of options makes a clear, confident decision nearly impossible.
The wrong choice costs more than just a wasted software budget. It means continued network disruptions that erode customer trust and directly impact your company’s bottom line. The risk is simply too high.
Here is what I recommend.
From everything I’ve reviewed, Wireshark stands out as the definitive choice. It cuts through diagnostic noise with powerful packet inspection, giving you precise answers.
Its ability to dissect hundreds of protocols is trusted by millions of professionals worldwide. When you need the best network troubleshooting software, this free, open-source tool is the industry standard.
For additional insights into business operations, my guide on best workforce planning software can help you forecast talent needs.
I highly recommend you visit the Wireshark website to download it now. It’s completely free and backed by a massive community of experts.
You’ll resolve network mysteries fast.
