Published by Dirk Paessler
Last updated on January 16, 2024
•
11 minute read
The choice between MRTG and PRTG for your network bandwidth monitoring is - to some extent - a matter of how comfortable you are with configuration files, a manual installation and with adding additional software tools for special tasks. And there are some features that clearly separate both products, too. If you are an experienced Linux user then the open source software MRTG can be a great choice since it can be configured to be a powerful and reliable helper for your daily network management.
But in a business environment which mainly uses the Windows plattform I believe that an integrated "out-of-the-box" solution like PRTG offers the better value - even though it is not free.
We have many customers that have migrated from MRTG to PRTG because they were able to cut their cost-of-ownership (i.e. cost for their daily work for configuration and maintenance of their monitoring system) by up to 80% as these case studies show:
- Electronic Theatre Controls Inc. Substitutes MRTG With PRTG
- The 401(k) Company Substitutes MRTG
- Energy Transfer Partners Migrated from MRTG to PRTG
| Feature | MRTG | PRTG 6 |
|---|---|---|
| SNMP Based Traffic Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Monitoring of any other SNMP based device | Yes | Yes (selected prebuilt OID libraries included) |
| Packet Sniffer based traffic monitoring | O | Yes |
| NetFlow based traffic monitoring (e.g. for Cisco Routers) | O | Yes |
| Latency Monitoring | (with custom scripts) | Yes |
| Classifies network traffic by IP address, protocol and other parameters | O | Yes (for packet sniffing and NetFlow) |
| Monitoring of custom script results | Yes | No (you can use PRTG's sister product IPCheck Server Monitor instead) |
| Operating Systems | Linux, Netware, Windows | Windows |
| Installation on Windows | Complex (see Windows installation instructions with seven pages on the MRTG website). "Exe-to service" and web server software must be installed and configured manually. | 2 minutes with a standard Windows setup wizard. Built-in "NT-service", web server and fast database system. |
| Configuration | Configuration file based, can be complex. | Easy to use Windows GUI with wizards |
| User Interface | Set of linked HTML pages | One intuitive Windows based and one rich javascript powered Web based user interface |
| Webserver | Not included (needs an external web server). Since monitoring results are written to the disk with a specified interval the graphs can show a slight delay. No user account management. | Built-in web server with optional user account management. Web server creates all graphs and tables on-the-fly, so they are always current. |
| Reporting Engine | With additional software | Configurable scheduled and on-demand reports (graphs and data tables) in HTML, Excel, TIF, RTF, or PDF format . Daily, monthly, and yearly reports can be exported via email or saved to file. Includes a billing system for bandwidth based billing with optional x% percentile calculation. |
| Notification System | With additional software | Sends an email, http request or starts an exe when errors occur and when traffic or threshold limits are reached. |
| License | Open Source | Freeware and Commercial Editions available. |
| Maintenance/Support | Mailing list, forum | maintenance contracts available, one-to-one support through emails and forums by the developer. |
What do you think should be in the list? Do you see incorrect information?
You there!
