Nmap is a free, open source network discovery, mapper, and security auditing software. Its core features include port scanning identifying unknown devices, testing for security vulnerabilities, and identifying network issues.
$7,980
Every Three Months per license
PingPlotter
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
PingPlotter is a graphical traceroute and ping tool that visualizes network performance in a way that makes identifying the source of problems quicker and easier for everyone from online gamers and video streamers to VoIP admins and IT pros. Features for remote deployment, network monitoring, scripting, and a web interface are included along with several additional capabilities.
$0
per user
Pricing
Nmap
PingPlotter
Editions & Modules
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$7,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$11,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Enterprise Redistribution License - Quarterly Term Maintenance Fee
$13,980
Every Three Months per license
Nmap OEM Small/Startup Company Redistribution License - Annual Maintenance Fee
$14,980
per year per license
Nmap OEM Mid-Sized Company Redistribution License - Annual Maintenance Fee
All perpetual licenses include a six-month trial period during which you can cancel for any reason and receive a full refund of all money paid (including maintenance). The term license is only a 3-month commitment and cal also be terminated with full refund during the first 30 days of the initial quarter.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Nmap
PingPlotter
Features
Nmap
PingPlotter
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Nmap is the ideal solution if you are working alot in network environments. If you come to grips with the syntax and the most-used features (the online community helps alot), you will be able to much more quickly and thoroughly troubleshoot networks or check for security vulnerabilities, for instance. It is free to use and is available for Windows and Linux, so I would say it is very much warrented for any network administrator or sysadmin to take it out for a spin.
The best scenario and best results are seen when the path does not reuse the same device for the "next hop". It is less well suited in situations where the path is being tricked by the re-use of devices for the next interface. This is seen required in many networks where the proper type of connection is not on an end device and the core device is used to provide a fiber to copper sort of "pass-through" connection.
exporting, There's a serious lack of ability to export the information in a readable format to present to VPs and such. I always find myself doing a lot of data massaging to get it in a pretty format
some scans can trigger sensitive IDS/IPS
SYN scans can be particularly aggressive and cause problems on remote systems.
Its a little confusing to see which targets are currently running pings and which ones are displayed in the plots.
Starting and stopping pings requires a right click and that would be better with a play/pause button I think.
Ability to drag and drop the graphs to reorder them.
more columns to show which targets are running and which are displayed. Currently this is done with symbols so you cant sort by just the running targets for example I've found.
Nmap uses are very practical and I don't think there is a better tools for what Nmap does. It is open-sources that therefore there is no cost to use it. It offers a number of benefits, including but not limited to network mapping, port scanning and more. It is very reliable as a network scanning tool.
I installed it and it just started working. I realized I could then tweak it to show what I needed but didn't have to spend a long time configuring it before use, editing YAML files etc. Maybe that's fine for a network professional, but I only need this software if something goes wrong, and then need it to work quickly out of the box.
There is a very large support community and a robust selection of add-ons and scripts. Once you get the use down this is one of the most powerful tools and you can find anything you are looking for as far as examples on the web. While not having official support its not lacking by any means.
I have not had much contact with the PingPlotter support, only one time have I went to them and it was a positive experience. The questions I had were answered quickly and professionally. I have no issue with the experience I had with the Support team. This was from before and after the purchase of the product.
A similar but more basic alternative is available on Android, called Fing. It's very useful for diagnosing issues on networks when you only have your mobile device to hand.
A graphical user interface alternative to Nmap, is Zenmap. It's the official GUI for Nmap and does use Nmap under the hood. It makes things a bit more 'point and click'.
PingPlotter has better visualizations and a stronger ability to capture historical data than other tools I've used. This makes it easier to find the root cause by looking back in the log data to find where latency or packet loss occurred.
NMap being free of charge has a positive impact on our budget. It is an enterprise-class tool that anyone can download and use.
NMap, both command line and GUI, is a very advanced tool that is easy to use, so there's very little learning curve involved, which has a positive impact on productivity and security.
A valuable feature that is a huge time saver is that you can compare scans. This saves hours of searching manually for differences in scan results. Faster results means faster mitigation of problems, which can be a real money saver.
