A packet loss alert or a latency spike on a network dashboard is a symptom. Most standalone network performance monitoring (NPM) tools stop right there, showing you the anomaly and leaving you to figure out what it's actually affecting.
The real fork in this market is between dedicated network-telemetry depth (SNMP polling, flow data, and deep packet inspection) and tools that connect network health directly to the application and infrastructure behavior it's affecting.
Both are legitimate answers. They just solve different problems.
The best network performance monitoring tools
Before comparing individual tools, it helps to know what actually separates them. The criteria that matter most include:
- Telemetry breadth: SNMP, flow data (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX), streaming telemetry, and cloud-native network data
- Hybrid and multicloud visibility: Coverage across on-prem, cloud, and the networks in between
- Investigation speed: How quickly the tool gets you from anomaly to root cause, including any AI-assisted correlation
- Deployment model: Self-hosted, cloud-hosted, or agentless
- Scalability: Whether the tool holds up as device count and data volume grow
- Total cost of ownership: Licensing plus the staffing and tuning it takes to run
Understanding these criteria and what network performance monitoring covers makes evaluating individual platforms much easier. Here's how nine of the most established platforms stack up.
New Relic
New Relic approaches network monitoring differently than most tools on this list: network data lives on the same platform as APM and infrastructure monitoring, not in a separate product. That means you can correlate a network anomaly directly to the service or deployment it's affecting without switching tools.
Key features:
- The unified data model ingests SNMP, network flow data, syslogs, and AWS, Azure, and GCP flow logs alongside application performance monitoring and infrastructure telemetry
- AI-powered anomaly detection flags deviations from baseline before they escalate
- Usage-based pricing includes 100 GB of free data ingest a month
Considerations: It's not a dedicated deep-packet-inspection or SNMP-first specialist, and teams needing granular protocol-level analysis may still want a purpose-built tool alongside it.
Best for: Teams whose main question during an incident is "Is this a network problem or an application problem?" rather than network engineers who need carrier-grade protocol analysis. Existing SNMP and flow data can connect directly into the platform.
Kentik
Kentik is a network-observability specialist built around flow logs, streaming telemetry, SNMP, and BGP route monitoring, with dedicated support for cloud network data across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and OCI.
Key features:
- Unified query layer across owned and third-party networks
- Long raw-data retention for historical network traffic analysis
- Strong DDoS detection and capacity planning features
Considerations: It's a network-telemetry platform first, so application-level context typically comes from integrating with a separate APM or observability tool.
Best for: Network engineering and NOC teams doing capacity planning, DDoS mitigation, or multicloud traffic analysis as their primary job.
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is an agentless, collector-based observability platform that extends into network monitoring alongside servers, cloud, and applications, with automatic device discovery and topology mapping.
Key features:
- Real-time performance tracking with machine-learning anomaly detection
- Edwin AI for correlating logs, metrics, and topology to speed up root cause analysis
- More than 3,000 integrations across vendors
Considerations: The breadth that makes it useful for full-stack visibility means less depth on network-specific protocols than a dedicated NPM tool.
Best for: IT operations teams managing large, hybrid environments that want network monitoring folded into a broader infrastructure view rather than run separately.
Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes focuses on the internet and network paths a company doesn't own but is still accountable for, using synthetic tests to monitor performance across ISPs, cloud providers, and SaaS applications.
Key features:
- Hop-by-hop path visualization and BGP route monitoring
- AI-driven outage detection across the internet, not just internal infrastructure
- Application dependency mapping tied to third-party network performance
Considerations: Its strength is visibility into networks outside your control, which makes it less suited as a primary tool for monitoring internal, owned infrastructure.
Best for: Digital experience and NOC teams accountable for performance across IT infrastructure they don't own, especially SaaS and cloud provider paths.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
Built on the Orion platform and also available as part of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor uses SNMP polling to track device availability, response time, and bandwidth usage.
Key features:
- NetPath for real-time monitoring and hop-by-hop path visualization across on-prem and cloud infrastructure
- PerfStack so teams can overlay network, system, and application metrics on one timeline
- Dependency-aware alerting to cut down on noise
Considerations: It's self-hosted, so it carries the setup and maintenance overhead that agentless or cloud-native tools avoid.
Best for: IT operations teams managing multi-vendor, on-prem-heavy networks who want a mature, purpose-built NPM tool and are comfortable running it themselves.
ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager is a device-based network monitoring tool covering routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and virtual infrastructure. It features a probe-and-central-server architecture for distributed environments.
Key features:
- WAN link analysis via Cisco IPSLA
- Over 200 dashboard widgets and color-coded fault alarms
- Transparent, device-based licensing starting at $95 a year for 10 devices
Considerations: Pricing scales with device count, which can add up quickly for larger or fast-growing environments.
Best for: Mid-market IT teams and MSPs managing multiple sites that want predictable, device-based pricing over usage-based billing.
Auvik
Built for fast setup, Auvik is a cloud-based network management tool with a lightweight collector that maps network topology automatically, often within the first hour of deployment.
Key features:
- Automatic discovery of switches, firewalls, routers, and other IP devices
- Configuration backup with automated change tracking for audit purposes
- Identifies more than 15,000 devices from over 700 vendors
Considerations: It's built for network visibility and configuration management specifically, not for correlating network issues with deep application telemetry.
Best for: MSPs and corporate IT teams that want fast time-to-value and multi-tenant management without much setup overhead.
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is an all-in-one monitoring tool built around individually configured sensors, covering servers, networks, cloud, and operational technology from a single dashboard.
Key features:
- Broad protocol support including SNMP, WMI, and flow data
- Flexible deployment: on-prem, distributed enterprise, or hosted
- Sensor-based licensing that scales from small deployments up
Considerations: The sensor-based licensing model means costs can be harder to predict as monitored components grow.
Best for: Small and mid-sized IT teams that want one tool covering network, server, and cloud monitoring without a steep learning curve.
Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source monitoring platform covering network, server, and application performance metrics. There is no licensing cost for the core software.
Key features:
- SNMP metric collection plus agent-based monitoring for deeper visibility
- Over 300 templates for common network hardware vendors
- Custom scripting and data transformation for advanced use cases
Considerations: As an open-source tool, it takes more in-house engineering time to deploy, tune, and maintain than a managed or SaaS tool.
Best for: Platform engineering and DevOps teams with the in-house skill to run and customize an open-source stack, and a preference for avoiding licensing costs entirely.
What to look for in a network performance monitoring tool
The features above matter less than what they translate to operationally. Three criteria do most of the work when you put any tool to the test.
Telemetry breadth and protocol coverage
SNMP still covers most legacy and on-prem infrastructure, but flow data and streaming telemetry are what give visibility into cloud and hybrid environments. A tool that only speaks SNMP will have blind spots the moment your network spans multiple cloud providers.
Correlation with application and infrastructure data
Investigation speed comes directly from this correlation. Downtime is expensive: New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast found that high-impact outages carry a median cost of $2 million per hour, or roughly $33,000 for every minute systems are down. A tool that can jump straight from a network anomaly to the affected service saves real time during an incident. A tool that only shows the anomaly leaves that correlation work to a human, under pressure, mid-incident.
Total cost of ownership (licensing, staffing, tuning)
License cost is the easy number to compare. The harder number is staffing. A self-hosted, sensor-based, or device-based tool needs someone to install it, tune alert thresholds, and keep it patched. A cloud-hosted or agentless tool trades some of that control for lower ongoing maintenance.
Specialist network tool or unified observability platform: Naming the problem you're solving
Teams whose primary job is deep network engineering, protocol-level troubleshooting, WAN and branch visibility, or carrier-grade telemetry are usually better served by a dedicated NPM specialist. That's the job Kentik, SolarWinds NPM, and similar tools were built for.
Teams trying to understand how a network issue is affecting a specific application or customer experience tend to get more value from a platform that already holds that application's telemetry. That's the case New Relic and similar unified platforms make, and it's the thinking behind consolidating monitoring tools onto fewer platforms in general.
Rather than treating one category as a universal answer, plenty of mature teams run both and accept the overlap. A network engineering team might keep a specialist tool for protocol-level work while the broader engineering org relies on a unified platform for day-to-day incident response. That's a reasonable outcome, not a failure to pick a side.
Matching the tool to your team's job-to-be-done
Strip away the feature comparisons, and it comes down to one question: Is the urgent problem network-engineering depth or application-impact visibility? Buy for that first, not for the longest feature list.
If your team needs carrier-grade telemetry, deep packet inspection, or protocol-level troubleshooting as a primary job function, a specialist tool like Kentik or SolarWinds NPM is the better starting point. If the real question is whether a network issue is why a service is slow or failing, a platform that already holds your application and infrastructure telemetry gets you to an answer faster.
New Relic's network performance monitoring is built for that second case, with network data on the same platform as APM and infrastructure, so teams never investigate a network anomaly in isolation. Start a free New Relic account and connect your existing SNMP or flow data to see how it correlates against your own services, no credit card required.
The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of New Relic. Any solutions offered by the author are environment-specific and not part of the commercial solutions or support offered by New Relic. Please join us exclusively at the Explorers Hub (support.newrelic.com) for questions and support related to this blog post. This blog may contain links to content on third-party sites. By providing such links, New Relic does not adopt, guarantee, approve or endorse the information, views or products available on such sites.
