Network congestion test

[loveorhateit]

Hi all,

I would like to test our Lan that is running about 150 computer and 12 servers for network congestions. We have 8 switches and one netscree which is our gateway/firewall.Is there something that i can use to test it for free? I have used simple ping and i get >1 replys..but i still think eihter our network is congested or soemthign is wrong.
Thanks In advanced.

 

[normntwrk]

PRTG will let you monitor 3 devices for free (the freeware version) and not too expensive to add devices

http://www.paessler.com/prtg

You'll need to dedicate a PC to it and plug that PC into a monitoring (mirrored) port on a switch

I use it and have found it to be a help to me

Norm

 

[loveorhateit]

Thank you. i misstyped its less than 1 on the reply. but i know the network is running slow, because i did some testing with an appliction that on the server was responding very fast but from a machine on the lan was running slow. I jsut dont know how to run a test on my netowrk. i dont have cisco swithes, its just plain 100mb 3com swithces. i run sniffer which helps me see the broadcast on the network but thats about it.

 

[gregarican]

Another good software product to try is called nTop. Years ago they had this as freeware and I still swear by it looking at who's hogging the LAN