PRTG Manual: Bandwidth Monitoring Comparison

The following table shows the differences between the four bandwidth monitoring methods available in PRTG:

Category

WMI

SNMP

Packet Sniffer

Flow (IPFIX, NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow)

Setup

Medium

Low

Low to high (depending on filter rules used)

Can be high (for example, the switch must be configured)


Traffic filtering

No

No

Yes

Yes

Differentiate bandwidth usage by protocol or IP addresses

No

No

Yes

Yes

PRTG can show Toplists (Top Talkers, Top Connections, Top Protocols, custom)

No

No

Yes

Yes

Filter bandwidth usage by IP address

No

No

Yes

Yes

Filter bandwidth usage by MAC address

No

No

Yes

No

Filter bandwidth usage by physical network port

Yes

Yes

No

No

Monitor network parameters other than bandwidth usage

Yes

Yes

No

No

CPU load on the PRTG core server system

Medium

Low

Higher, depends on the amount of traffic

Higher, depends on the amount of traffic

Excess bandwidth usage of monitoring

Small

Small

None (except when monitoring switch ports are used)

Depends on the traffic

More

i_square_blueKNOWLEDGE BASE

Should I use SNMP, Flow (IPFIX/NetFlow/sFlow) or Packet Sniffing for my monitoring?

How do I differentiate between excessive bandwidth usage with PRTG?