When you’re dealing with network issues, the go-to solution that often comes to mind is using a ping monitoring tool. Why? Because it’s the quickest and ?asi?st way to check if your s?rv?rs or d?vic?s can talk to ?ach oth?r ov?r th? n?twork. It’s lik? a virtual handshak? to s?? if ?v?rything is okay. 

Ping monitoring tools help you keep an ?y? on your int?rn?t protocol (IP) and r?lat?d compon?nts. Th?s? tools l?t you manage and watch over your connections, making sure your n?twork is doing its job – k??ping syst?ms conn?ct?d and running smoothly. 

By using a ping monitoring tool, you can quickly v?rify if your conn?ctions are working as they should. It’s lik? a n?twork h?alth ch?ck to see if your systems ar? up and running or if th?r?’s a hiccup. 

Now, let’s div? into th? world of ping monitoring and explore some of th? b?st tools out there to help you monitor and fix any n?twork hiccups. 

How Ping Monitoring Works?

By doing Ping tests regularly, you can figure out the fastest, slowest, and average times for the device to respond. We call this time between sending the signal and getting a response the “ping time,” usually measured in milliseconds (ms). The lower the ping time, the better – it means your network is speedy and in good shape.

Ping monitoring is lik? s?nding a fri?ndly signal to a d?vic? or comput?r and ch?cking how quickly it r?sponds. It’s lik? saying “h?llo” to s?? if ?v?rything is working smoothly. If the d?vic? replies fast, it’s a good ping, but if it takes too long, it’s considered bad. 

Here’s the technical bit: ping sends a special message called an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to a specific spot on the network. When that spot gets the message, it quickly replies with an echo to confirm it got the signal. So, ping monitoring is like a quick conversation to make sure everything is running smoothly in your network.

Top 5 Ping Tools 

Here are the top five ping tools that can help spot issues by providing real-time network info.

SolarWinds Ping Monitor Tool

With SolarWinds Ping Monitor Software, you can easily keep an eye on how quickly devices respond. All you have to do is pick the device you want to watch. This software lets you share monitoring data using text files or show it off with images or graphs.

And it’s not just about pinging! SolarWinds comes with a bunch of cool features. You get a WAN Killer Traffic Generator, a MAC Address Scanner, an SNMP MIB Browser, a Ping Sweep, a Subnet Calculator, an MIB Walk, a Switch Port Mapper, and a whole lot more. It’s like having a superhero toolkit for checking and managing your network.

Site24x7

The Network Monitor part of the Site 24×7 is smart. It uses the ping monitor to find all the gadgets connected to your network and creates a list of them. Then, it takes this info and makes a cool map to show you how everything is connected. Regular check-ups make sure this map is always up to date.

Site24x7 is like a superhero for monitoring everything related to your online world – websites, cloud, servers, networks, applications, and even how real users experience your site. It keeps an eye on important things like how fast your site responds and if it’s available, giving you useful metrics. Among the basic monitors in Site24x7, you find ping alongside other friends like HTTP/HTTPS, WebSocket, DNS, and FTP, NTP, or SMTP servers.

PingPlotter

PingPlotter Pro is a great tool for checking how your network is doing. It works on Windows, Mac OS, and iOS, and you can even keep an eye on things remotely through a web interface. This means you can monitor lots of devices from one place.

For a quick look at your n?twork’s h?alth, PingPlott?r Pro has summary scr??ns and jitt?r graphs. Th?s? h?lp admins s?? what’s going on with just a glanc? at th? data. But what r?ally stands out is its trac?rout? f?atur?. 

With a us?r-fri?ndly int?rfac?, it shows you th? tim? it tak?s for data to travel and any loss?s that happen along th? way. It’s lik? following a virtual trail of data from point to point, giving admins a cl?ar vi?w of what’s happ?ning in their n?twork and making it ?asi?r to spot and fix problems. 

Better Stack

B?tt?r Stack is like a superhero for keeping an ?y? on your onlin? stuff. It does a bunch of cool things, like checking if your w?bsit? is up, managing incidents, and letting p?opl? know if th?r?’s downtim? through status pages. 

With B?tt?r Stack, you g?t ch?cks for all kinds of things – k?ywords in URLs, multipl? v?rification st?ps, heartbeat ch?cks, SSL, ping, and port monitoring. It’s lik? having a virtual sup?rh?ro squad, making sure ?v?rything runs smoothly. Plus, it plays nic? with oth?r tools you might already be using,  lik? Datadog, N?w R?lic, Grafana, and mor?. 

Here’s the neat part: Better Stack checks your website every 30 seconds, not just from one place but from different locations. This means no more false alarms or missing issues that depend on where you are.

If something goes wrong, Better Stack doesn’t just tell you there’s a problem – it shows you exactly what happened with screenshots and a timeline. You can use its reports and analytics to look back at how well your site has been doing, check if it meets service level agreements (SLA), and understand incidents better.

iplocation.io

The Ping test tool by iplocation.io is like a handy helper for people who want to check if a website, domain, or IP address is working okay. It’s super easy to use – you just open it, type in the website or IP address you’re curious about, and hit the “Ping Now” button.

After that, the tool gives you some useful info. If ?v?rything’s good, and no data is lost, it m?ans th? conn?ction is solid,  and th? thing you’re ch?cking is onlin?. But if th?r?’s data loss, it could m?an th? connection isn’t r?liabl?. 

If th? tool tim?s out, it’s lik? a littl? r?d flag. It might m?an th?r?’s an issue with th? IP addr?ss,  th? thing you’r? ch?cking is offlin?, or th?r?’s som?thing in th? way that’s stopping it from r?sponding to ping r?qu?sts. 

Final Words  

For IT professionals, it’s crucial to know if their important s?rv?rs and n?twork gadg?ts ar? doing well or if they sudd?nly go offlin?. A ping tool is lik? a helpful buddy in this situation. It constantly sends r?qu?sts to your important n?twork d?vic?s, making sur? ?v?rything ar? okay. 

Using a ping monitoring app is smart because it doesn’t hog up a lot of your network’s power. This means you can k??p your s?rvic?s running smoothly without slowing down your whole network or internet connection. How you s?t up your ping monitoring d?p?nds on what you need, but with a littl? digging and t?sting, you can find th? b?st way to k??p your n?twork in top shap?.

Featured image by U. Storsberg on Unsplash