A network monitoring tool can be acquired online for free. While most system administrators feel that anything free is of no use, but that is absolutely not true. You can find many great tools online that are free that work every bit as good as the paid versions. When looking for a free version of the tool you need, you need to be careful and choose wisely.One of the main things you need to check before you download any free tool to examine your network is it free of viruses? There are many hackers out there who just love to cause damage to other people’s systems. What they will do is take free software and put viruses on there that will infect the computer networks causing all kinds of trouble both financially and mentally.Now lets talk about the kinds of tools you need and what they can do. The over-all operation of the computer network can be managed satisfactorily using a number of these free network-monitoring-tools.The monitoring tools and their uses that can be found online for free are:1. Ping tester – a network-monitoring-tool essential for detecting servers and other network devices within a network. This kind of monitoring instrument will usually perform pinging activities in the background.2. Bandwidth monitoring tool – System Administrators need a monitoring tool that can measure bandwidth usage of each server as part of network management systems. Information logs can be extracted in a daily, weekly or monthly basis from this tool.3. Network device and node discovery tools – network management will also require a tool that can detect a network device in real-time. The System Administrator will need to know if a computer user will connect a device to the network since most technical set-up of computers have provisions for plug and play devices.4. Process and activity monitoring tools – System Administrators use protocol analyzers and network sniffers to monitor the activities going on inside the network. They are able to identify processes and activities that can pose a threat to the security and operation of the network using these network tools.5. Port monitoring tool – this network tool will monitor processes and activities at the serial and parallel ports of network devices. Some tools have enhancement and filtering capabilities that can be useful to System Administrators.6. Security monitoring tool – Network monitoring systems use this tool to detect external and internal threats to the network. Though most network-monitoring-tools that can block unwanted traffic are only available for a price, System Administrators usually use free network monitoring tools to detect these attacks and use another system to block them.A free network monitoring tool can be a great asset to any computer network. Just be sure you know that the tool you are getting is what will do you and your computer system the most good.