PRTG

Stands for: Paessler Router Traffic Grapher, Paessler's sensor-based monitoring software

Paessler's monitoring software, named Paessler Router Traffic Grapher, which counts and licenses everything in sensors, one sensor per measured value, with a free edition up to 100 of them.

PRTG is the monitoring tool the mid-market learned by downloading. Paessler's own definition of its unit is the thing to understand: in PRTG, sensors are the basic monitoring elements, one sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, the free space on a disk, and on average you need about five to ten sensors per device or one per switch port. Licensing follows the same unit: the freeware edition is free of charge for up to 100 sensors, and the subscription tiers run from PRTG 500 to PRTG 10000, each named for the number of aspects it can monitor. It runs on Windows servers and supports distributed monitoring across an unlimited number of remote locations through probes. The editions are PRTG Network Monitor, PRTG Enterprise Monitor, PRTG Hosted Monitor and an MSP edition. Paessler, founded in Nuremberg in 1997, has its own entry on the industry record; MRTG, whose name PRTG echoes, has the entry beside this one.

The sensor model. Most monitoring products count devices; PRTG counts measurements. Paessler puts it plainly on the product page: sensors are the basic monitoring elements, and one sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. The rule of thumb the page gives is five to ten sensors per device, or one sensor per switch port, which is also the honest way to size a licence: a 48-port access switch with a few system sensors is about fifty sensors on its own, and a tier is exhausted faster than a device count would suggest.

Editions and licensing. The product family on Paessler's site is PRTG Network Monitor, PRTG Enterprise Monitor, PRTG Hosted Monitor and a PRTG MSP Edition. The freeware edition of PRTG Network Monitor is free of charge for up to 100 sensors, which is how most engineers first met it. The subscription tiers on the product page at the time of reading were PRTG 500, 1000, 2500, 5000 and 10000, each described as monitoring up to that many aspects of your devices. PRTG Network Monitor runs on Windows servers, and distributed monitoring across an unlimited number of remote locations is part of the design: remote probes collect locally and report to the core.

What it monitors. Paessler describes integrated support of all important technologies and protocols and groups the capabilities by what is watched, network devices, virtual environments, applications, websites, databases, cloud services and environmental parameters, with SNMP and an HTTP API named explicitly and custom sensors as the extension point. The page claims twenty years of monitoring expertise, which matches the company's own founding in Nuremberg in 1997.

The name. PRTG stands for Paessler Router Traffic Grapher, a deliberate echo of MRTG, the Multi Router Traffic Grapher that Tobias Oetiker published in 1995 and that drew the first traffic graphs most network engineers ever saw. The lineage is the point: the five-minute traffic graph of a router interface became a commercial product with ten thousand sensors behind it, and the glossary entry for MRTG tells the first half of that story.

Also known as: prtg network monitor, paessler prtg, prtg sensors, prtg hosted monitor

Sources

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