PRTG Manual: Welcome to PRTG

Welcome to PRTG. You have chosen a software product that comes with a comprehensive set of features to monitor your entire network.

Why Network Monitoring is Important

Today, nearly every business relies on a computer and network infrastructure for internet, internal management, telephone, and email. A complex set of servers and network equipment is required to ensure that business data flows seamlessly between employees, offices, and customers. The economic success of an organization is tightly connected to a hitch-free flow of data.

That is why your computer network has to work successfully: reliability, speed, and efficiency are crucial. But, like all other technical objects, network devices may fail from time to time and may potentially cause trouble and loss of sales, no matter what migration efforts have been made up front.

You need to take three key steps to maintain network uptime, reliability, and speed:

1. Set up a well-planned network with reliable components.
2. Create recovery plans for the event of device failure.
3. Monitor the network to get informed about failures when they (are about to) occur.

Monitoring Networks with PRTG

PRTG is a comprehensive network monitoring application for Windows-based systems. It is suitable for networks of all sizes and capable of LAN, WAN, WLAN, and VPN monitoring. You can also monitor physical or virtual web, mail, and file servers, Linux systems, Windows clients, routers, and much more.

PRTG monitors network availability and bandwidth usage, as well as various other network parameters such as quality of service, memory load, and CPU usage, even on remote machines. PRTG provides system administrators with live readings and periodical usage trends to optimize the efficiency, layout, and setup of leased lines, routers, firewalls, servers, and other network components.

The software monitors a network that uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), packet sniffer, Cisco NetFlow (as well as IPFIX, sFlow, and jFlow), and many other industry standard protocols. It runs on a Windows-based machine in your network for 24 hours a day. PRTG constantly records the network usage parameters and the availability of network systems. The recorded data is stored in an internal database for later analysis.