The job of a network engineer just keeps getting more complicated. Mission critical applications are competing for bandwidth. The sheer number of devices is exploding, driven by IoT. And the network itself if being extended to the cloud, the edge and to the home office.  

And then there’s cybersecurity to worry about. Attacks are on the rise across the board, and attackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities or backdoors, upping the need for solid and secure networking to act as an early warning system for cybersecurity defenses.

Thankfully, there are many great tools available to help network engineers complete their never-ending tasks. And many of them are available for free. Here’s our list of 12 killer network tools that won’t break the bank. 

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Wireshark is a popular, free and open-source packet capture tool that enables network and security administrators to take a “deep dive” analysis into traffic moving through a network.

Wireshark can be deployed for a variety of purposes including sniffing out security issues, troubleshooting network performance problems, traffic optimization, or as part of the application development and testing process.

What Does Wireshark Do?

Wireshark is primarily used to capture packets of data moving through a network. The tool allows users to put network interface controllers (NICs) into promiscuous mode to observe most traffic, even unicast traffic, which is not sent to a controller’s MAC address. However, doing this normally requires superuser permissions and may be restricted on some networks.

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Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a free and open source tool used for vulnerability checking, port scanning and, of course, network mapping. Despite being created back in 1997, Nmap remains the gold standard against which all other similar tools, either commercial or open source, are judged.

Nmap has maintained its preeminence because of the large community of developers and coders who help to maintain and update it. The Nmap community reports that the tool, which anyone can get for free, is downloaded several thousand times every week.

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Private clouds make efficient use of storage, compute, and memory resources, can provide faster response times for enterprise applications, and help comply with regulations about where data is stored.

What is a private cloud?

The concept of a private cloud is relatively simple and straightforward. NIST defined it in its NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap back in 2013 with this description: “The private cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units).”

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Ethernet is one of the original networking technologies, having been invented nearly 50 years ago. And yet, because of the simplicity by which the communications protocol can be deployed and its ability to incorporate modern advancements without losing backwards compatibility, Ethernet continues to reign as the de facto standard for computer networking.

At its core, Ethernet is a protocol that allows computers (from servers to laptops) to talk to each other over wired networks that use devices like routers, switches and hubs to direct traffic. Ethernet works seamlessly with wireless protocols, too.

Its ability to work within almost any environment has led to its universal adoption around the world. This is especially true because it allows organizations to use the same Ethernet protocol in their local area network (LAN) and their wide-area network (WAN). That means that it works well in data centers, in private or internal company networks, for internet applications and almost anything in between. It can even support the most complex forms of networking, like virtual private networks (VPNs) and software-defined networking deployments.

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NOC (pronounced “knock,”) stands for a network operations center, and if the term conjures up images of a NASA-like control room, you would not be too far off from reality – at least at some organizations.

While the role of a NOC can vary, the general idea is to create a room or centralized facility where information technology (IT) professionals can constantly monitor, maintain and troubleshoot all aspects of a network. The NOC must also be equipped with all of the technology required in order to support those operations, including monitors, computers, telecommunications equipment and a fast connection to network resources.

NOCs were created for two main reasons. The first was to give IT staffers a central location to work from, instead of having them run around trying to fix problems or perform preventative maintenance, like patching systems, from different locations.

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The Spanning Tree Protocol, sometimes just referred to as Spanning Tree, is the Waze or MapQuest of modern Ethernet networks, directing traffic along the most efficient route based on real-time conditions.

Based on an algorithm created by American computer scientist Radia Perlman while she was working for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1985, the primary purpose of Spanning Tree is to prevent redundant links and the looping of communication pathways in complex network configurations. As a secondary function, Spanning Tree can route packets around trouble spots to ensure that communications are able to wind through networks that might be experiencing disruptions.

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