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Nessoft Products
Compare and Contrast |
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 PingPlotter Standard and MultiPing target different needs. MultiPing focuses on monitoring of multiple targets, and gives you the ability to compare these targets to make decisions about them. PingPlotter Standard focuses on short and long-term diagnostics and troubleshooting of a single target. MultiPing can tell you there is a problem, whereas PingPlotter Standard gives you more information so you can find and solve the problem. PingPlotter Pro combines both of these concepts, giving you the ability to monitor and troubleshoot multiple targets.
* This is not a complete feature list. This is a summary of significant differences.
| MultiPing allows you to monitor multiple targets simultaneously (target-only). PingPlotter Standards allows you to trace all hops to a single target. PingPlotter Pro does it all - letting you trace to each target and show a summary list of targets. |
| All Nessoft products measure latency and packet loss to your selected target(s). MultiPing shows the areas of problem just for the final target, while PingPlotter shows all the routers between you and the final destination so you can really pinpoint the problem. |
| Your workspace, in MultiPing and PingPlotter Pro, consists of the targets you're monitoring, the interval you're tracing, the screen layout, plus a variety of factors. You can save this, and then reload it later to resume your monitoring session. |
Graph any host(s) over time, including packet loss and latency. Lets you scroll back and forth over time, and zoom in on any specific time to find out where problems occurred. This is a key capability in helping you understand what happened, when and why. MultiPing graphs performance for the final destination while PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro do that, plus any of the intermediate hops between you and the final target.
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| Detach and float graphs so you can watch while using other applications. MultiPing allows your time graphs to stay on top and/or be semi-transparent so you can always keep an eye on the performance of your important target(s). |
| Sort monitored target list by name, IP, latency, packet loss, etc. PingPlotter Standard doesn't trace to multiple targets, so this doesn't apply to PingPlotter Standard. MultiPing and PingPlotter Pro both have a list of targets that can be sorted by any of the statistic or text columns (packet loss, minimum, maximum, average, name, ip address, etc). |
| PingPlotter Pro and MultiPing both allow you to load a list of targets from a text file (one target per line). |
| Both MultiPing and PingPlotter Pro (when running as a Windows Service) can automatically save your "workspace" - targets, times, visible graphs, etc - and then reload these when you restart. |
| All of our network monitoring and troubleshooting tools let you pick a time period and show the statistics for that period. PingPlotter Pro even lets you make up your own statistics and formulas. |
| PingPlotter (Standard and Pro) have the great capability of showing the route data takes between you and the target server. This is a key differentiator between PingPlotter and MultiPing. Often, problems occur not at the final destination, but because of some route problem closer to you (like your own ISP, or maybe even your own wireless network). PingPlotter lets you see where the problem is occurring. |
| PingPlotter Pro gives you the capability of tracing to multiple targets simultaneously, then showing just the final targets on a summary screen. There are a number of advantages to this, but one great advantage is that PingPlotter Pro coordinates sending of data to multiple targets so the data quality stays high (if you send out multiple packets simultaneously, then one of them has to wait for the other - this might be a very small wait on a fast connection, to a pretty large one on a slow connection). |
| Often a problem will occur after you start your tracing session. When a problem occurs, the route your data takes might change. PingPlotter lets you keep track of these route changes to give you the information you need to understand (and take action to solve) problems that occur. You also have the ability of comparing routes to see what router was participating in one route, but not another. |
| PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro allow you to save collected data for later analysis. This data is saved in a .pp2 file which includes all route information, timing information, and everything you see in the PingPlotter display. |
| PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro will automatically save data and/or image files at the interval of your choosing - allowing you to load it from another machine, review it later, or similar tasks. We have some more information about long term monitoring strategies that rely on this here. |
| You might want to move collected data to another application (e.g., Microsoft Excel) for further analysis. PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro allow you to export data. In addition, PingPlotter Pro gives you access to its data through the COM api. MultiPing does not have native ability to export data, but you can send the data to PingPlotter and export from there. |
| PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro allow you to customize packets, including cargo contents, packet size, packet rate, timeout period, TOS and other settings. This can help you more closely approximate the data problems you're troubleshooting. |
| You can query the Internic servers by name, or the ARIN servers by IP address to see who owns and runs a particular router / hop / IP address. |
Voice over IP requires a stable network, with a solid, consistent latency. Several metrics are popular to measure network stability, namely Jitter and MoS (mean opinion score). PingPlotter Pro has significant capabilities in reporting and/or alerting on these two metrics.
Note that PingPlotter Standard and MultiPing both show packet loss and latency, which are hugely important for Voice over IP. |
| PingPlotter Standard and Pro allow you to copy collected data in text or image format, and then paste it into another application (email, spreadsheet, word processing application, etc). |
| PingPlotter Pro will compose an email for you - in your email client (using MAPI), including a screenshot and collected data capture file. This is an easy way to get data to someone else who might be interested in the problems you're having, and sends enough data for them to analyze the problem. |
| PingPlotter Standard, PingPlotter Pro and MultiPing default to using ICMP packets to collect data. |
| PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro both allow you to use UDP or TCP packets to track performance. This gives you more options, in case packets are being blocked, plus gives you the ability to more closely simulate the data stream you're troubleshooting. |
| PingPlotter Standard, Pro and MultiPing allow you to set parameters where you want to be notified of the condition. If the conditions fire an alert, you can log that data to a text file, play a wave file, or send yourself an e-mail with the pertinent information included. Additional alert types are available in PingPlotter Pro. |
| All editions of our network monitoring products are built to minimize CPU use. This gives you the capability of continuous monitoring while you're doing other things - like playing a game, or trading stocks. When a problem occurs, you can look to see what's happening on your network. |
| When doing long-term monitoring, you want your network troubleshooting tool to do its thing, but you don't want it to get in your way. Moving the icon to the tool tray can unclutter the task bar. |
| When you zoom in to the perfect picture, you may want to save it - so you can post it someplace, send it in an email, or create a web page. PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro save images in .BMP, .GIF and .PNG format. |
| When collecting data for long periods of time you probably don't need to keep all data in memory. If you tell PingPlotter/MultiPing to "prune off" old data, your memory footprint can stay low so you can have unlimited length monitoring/troubleshooting sessions. |
| PingPlotter Pro allows remote viewing of active targets and ability to change target settings via web interface. You can use the built-in PingPlotter Pro web server, or Microsoft's IIS. |
| PingPlotter Pro's built-in script engine allows extended functionality, definition of custom measurements, and a variety of other capabilities. We provide a number of extensions in our library, or you can build your own. |
| PingPlotter Pro can interface with a remote agent installed on another machine. This allows PingPlotter Pro to trace from that remote machine. This has a variety of uses, not the least of which is the ability to show a trace from both ends of a connection. This is also useful if you're working behind a firewall, but there is a machine (reachable via any TCP port) that can "proxy" the trace. |
| PingPlotter Pro has the capability to run as a Windows service, starting when you load Windows automatically. |
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If you're interested in reviewing some scenarios that take advantage of the strengths of each tool, please visit some scenarios we've documented.
If you've reviewed this page and related information, and you still have questions, please feel free to ask us your question by emailing us at info@nessoft.com.
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