MultiPing

 

MultiPing

 

The complete lightweight tool for multi-target monitoring and alerting

 

Network monitoring in 60 seconds

MultiPing provides a graphical view of network performance, monitors hundreds of targets, and sends automatic alerts. This affordable tool is great for professionals and newbies alike, and can be monitoring your network in less than a minute.

 

MultiPing's Features Include:

 

Graph Network Performance

Visually represent networking metrics. Compute packet loss % as well as avg, min, and max latency.

 

Time Graphs

See performance over time, identify patterns, and improve understanding of network issues.

 

Follow Dynamic DNS

Continue watching (or alert) when target IP addresses change.

 

Alert System

Send emails, play sounds, launch executables, change icons, or log to files when network issues occur.

 

Network Discovery

Scan a range of IPs and automatically add responders to the target list.

 

IPv6 Support

Mix IPv4 and IPv6 as you migrate to the protocol of the future.

 

PingPlotter Integration

Share data with PingPlotter for advanced troubleshooting.

 

Explorable Timeline

Browse performance history by dragging, focusing and zooming in on periods of interest.

 

Configurable Interface

Undock, resize, hide, and reorder graphs to keep an eye on what's important to you.

 

Why Use MultiPing?

 

MultiPing is the comprehensive, lightweight "go-to" application for multi-target monitoring and alerting. It allows you to simultaneously monitor numerous targets, and provides detailed historical information about the data it collects in an easy-to-consume graphical format.

 

You can use MultiPing to help with a number of different monitoring situations, such as:

• Monitoring a large amount of IP cameras. MultiPing provides a great way to keep track of which of your IP cameras are responding, and can notify your if one (or more) happens to go down - so you can get it fixed before it becomes an issue
• You can monitor key servers/routers/machines to see their status, if they're responding, and how quickly they're responding. If you're in charge of a large network with a lot of connected devices - MultiPing can make your job much easier.
• If you're a gamer, VoIP subscriber, or stock trader - MultiPing can help you pick the best server to make sure you're getting the best performance possible. You can set up a list of possible servers you might use, and sort them by latency, packet loss, or more - and choose the best performing one out of the group
• Monitor all the active devices on your home network with MultiPing. Everything is network-connected these days (well... *almost* everything). You can use MultiPing to discover the devices connected to your home network, and get alerted if something goes offline that shouldn't (like that leak sensor under your sink...)

 

There are some situations, however, where MultiPing might not be the perfect tool for you, such as:

• You already know there's a network problem (and when it happens), but need help determining where that problem originates.
• You need to be able to save past data to send to another source for review.
• Kryptonite has somehow made its way into your office, and you're "allergic."
• You need something that runs on a hosted (subscription) service outside your network.

 

PingPlotter can accomplish the first two of these things (and much more). PingPlotter Standard can also be paired with MultiPing to help give you a powerful toolset to monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot uptime on a network attached target.

 

How MultiPing Works?

 

MultiPing uses the basic concept of an ICMP ping to do its work. This utility has been a core network troubleshooting tool for a number of years. MultiPing takes this core concept, and then adds long-term monitoring, graphical displays, alerts, and a variety of other useful features.

 

The performance of a network target (i.e.: web site, service, device, or similar) can be measured by sending an ICMP ping packet. Your computer sends a "packet" of data (sometimes called an "echo request") to a remote computer or router. When this remote computer or router receives this data, it responds back (sometimes called an "echo reply").

 

If we measure the time it takes for the packet to get to that site, and then return to you, we call this the "ping time" or "latency." In general, the lower this is, the better your connection to a site is. This ping time is displayed in MultiPing as the response time in milliseconds (also called "Round Trip Time" - the time it takes a packet to travel the full round trip). This is useful in monitoring situations to alert you in the event the target server isn't responding (which will show up as a lost packet, red, in MultiPing), or is responding slowly.

 

MultiPing's high performance, low overhead engine allows you to send multiple ping requests to multiple targets simultaneously at an interval of your choosing (while minimizing CPU use - so you're able to monitor continuously without it affecting other running programs). From there - it takes the information that is gathered, and displays it in easy-to-read timeline graphs, so you're able to quickly view and diagnose any issues that may arise. The built in alerting system can also notify you of any conditions that you deem to be unsuitable, and notifies you when any of the targets you're monitoring start to behave poorly.

 

Adding and Monitoring Targets

 

Adding a target in MultiPing is a fairly straight-forward process: simply type a target (either the DNS name or IP address) into the "Enter New Target" field, and hit the "enter" on your keyboard (or click on the "+" button). This will (with the default settings) automatically look up the IP address/DNS name you entered, start pinging that target, and automatically show a timeline graph for that target. This process can be repeated until you've got a full list of targets (we regularly test MultiPing running with 1000+ targets).

 

Loading targets from a file

If you've already got a pretty lengthy list of targets you want to monitor, and don't want to go through the process of adding them one at a time - MultiPing does have an option to load a list of targets from a file (one general format, and one MultiPing specific file format).

 

You can generate a target list in any text editor (notepad works just fine) by creating a document and adding one target per line (each line in the file will be read by MultiPing as one target, exactly as if it was entered in the 'Enter New target" box). Once you've got your list created - save it with either a ".lst" or ".mpl" file format.

 

 

Now, in MultiPing, you'll see an option in the bottom right hand corner to "Load From File" - click on the "Browse for file..." option, locate your list, and click "open." MultiPing will now load the list of targets, and begin pinging to them!

 

Renaming targets

If you're loading up targets by IP address, and these addresses don't resolve to a name that's *particularly* interesting/meaningful to you - you can always create a more friendly name (or an "alias," if you will) to help keep your targets more easily identifiable. There are two options available to help you accomplish this:

• Alias an IP address by entering the IP address, followed by a space, and then the alias you want to use. For example:

192.168.10.133 My Server Name

 

• Rename a target at any time by simply right clicking on the target (in the upper graph) and selecting the option to "rename selected target."

 

Navigating the Target Graph

 

The target graph (or upper graph) in MultiPing breaks down all of the trace information that's been collected from your targets, and displays it in a series of columns. This portion of MultiPing also has some configuration options present, and contains several different parts:

• Stop/Start button: This one is pretty self-explanatory: click this button to either start or stop tracing to all targets
• Ping interval setting: Here, you can specify how long you'd like MultiPing to wait between sending its requests. We recommend a setting of 2.5 seconds - as this gives a good amount of accuracy without too much data. You can pick from the list, or enter your own (even sub-second).
• Samples to include setting: All of the statistics in the target graph are based off of this setting. If you have it set to 10 - then MultiPing is looking at the most recent 10 samples, and basing its data off of this. The "samples to include" setting also directly controls the amount of data shown in the focus area of the timeline graph (which we'll cover in the next section). If you think in times instead of numbers (5 minutes?), enter the time you're thinking of and MultiPing will convert that to samples for you, based on the data you're looking at.
• Packet Loss column: This column shows the percentage of lost packets in the current sample set (current sample set = "samples to include" setting)
• IP/DNS name columns: These two columns will display both the IP address, and the best name that MultiPing can determine for your target(s)
• Statistics columns: In these columns, MultiPing will show the statistics for your targets based off of your current sample set. You can configure these columns to show the average latency (Avg), minimum latency (Min), maximum latency (Max) and current sample's latency (Cur)
• Graph column: This column will show a minimum/maximum latency line (unless it’s hidden), a blue "x" for the most current sample, and a red line to show the average latency to that target. The graph also shows packet loss in the form of a light red bar, which gets longer as the packet loss increases.

 

You do have the option to configure the target graph to show (or not show) certain columns. If you right click anywhere in the target graph and select the option to "customize view" - you'll be brought to a window where you can select which items you'd like to show/hide.

 

Navigating the Timeline Graph

 

The timeline graph is one of MultiPing's most useful features. It displays the trace data from your targets into an easy to consume graphical format that can make reviewing and troubleshooting past data a breeze.

 

The timeline graph breaks down into six basic parts:

• Latency: The black line on the graph is your target's roundtrip latency for that particular point in time
• Latency scale: Shows the scale of latency over a certain period. This scale can be set to auto adjust itself accordingly, or, you can set it to a pre-defined value
• Lost packets: The red lines in the graph indicate that MultiPing did not receive a response during that particular point in time (can be a percent, based on your time scale).
• Packet loss scale: Shows the scale of packet loss (and is set by default at 30%). This can get a *bit* confusing if you're looking at a small time period (between 60 seconds an hour) - because each sample can be multiple pixels wide (resulting in a solid red line). Only when you zoom out to a bigger timeframe (between 3 to 48 hours) does this become helpful. See our knowledge base article on time graph packet loss height for a more detailed description of how this works.
• Comment indicator: Shows anywhere that a comment has been made on a timeline graph (you can add a comment by right clicking on a graph, and choosing "Create comment").
• Upper graph focus area: Double clicking on an area in a timeline graph will focus the upper graph to that period of time, which is shown by the blue highlighted area. The size of the focus area is dictated by the "Samples to include" setting at the top of MultiPing.

 

Navigating through the timeline graph is as easy as clicking and dragging it around. You can also use your mouse's scroll wheel to accomplish the same task. You can adjust the amount of time shown by right clicking anywhere inside of a timeline graph and choosing a new timeframe preference (anywhere from 60 seconds to 48 hours). Your mouse's scroll wheel works a bit of magic here, too. If you hold down the "ctrl" key on your keyboard while using the scroll wheel, the graph will expand and contract accordingly - at the point where your mouse cursor is.

 

Getting Notified of a Problem

 

The alerts in MultiPing can monitor the conditions of an IP address, and then perform an action of your choosing when those conditions are met, or exceed a specified range. Alerts can be broken down into two parts: conditions (the specified parameters you set that dictate the acceptable/unacceptable ranges for a target), and events (what you want MultiPing to do when a target does/doesn't meet your set conditions).

 

You can set MultiPing to alert you on a variety of different conditions, such as:

• Packet loss over a specified threshold
• Latency over a specified threshold
• A site not responding
• An IP address change (Dynamic DNS)

 

MultiPing can alert you in multiple ways when conditions are met (or not met), such as:

• Send an email
• Play a sound
• Log to a text file
• Change the tray icon and/or show a message
• Launch an executable of your choosing

 

The great thing about MultiPing's alert system is that you can combine any of the above five types of alert events, all within the same alert tied to an IP address, each with their own trigger mechanisms:

• Each time alert conditions are met (repeating)
• When alert conditions start (enters alert state)
• When alert conditions end (leaves alert state)
• Each time alert conditions are *not* met

 

The alert system in MultiPing is based on a "many to many" type of relationship between targets and alerts. This means is that you can setup one alert, and then use it on many different targets. Conversely, you can have one target that has many alerts tied to it. Taking that a step further, as mentioned above, each one of those alerts can have any or all of the five alert events configured within it.