100 Best Apps for Network Engineers
Network engineers often combine packet analysis, observability, remote access, and lab tools to keep complex environments understandable. This list begins with 25 widely used options across those workflows.
Wireshark
Wireshark captures and decodes network packets, letting engineers inspect protocols, conversations, and traffic anomalies in detail. It helps diagnose elusive connectivity or application issues by exposing packets actually crossing an interface.
tcpdump
tcpdump captures packets from command-line interfaces using filters for hosts, ports, protocols, and packet attributes. It enables lightweight traffic investigation on servers and appliances where graphical tools are unavailable.
Nmap
Nmap discovers hosts and services by scanning ports, identifying protocols, and gathering network service information. It helps engineers quickly map unknown environments and verify which services are exposed.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor monitors network devices through SNMP and presents availability, performance, and alerting data. It helps teams spot device outages and capacity pressure without manually checking every network component.
PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG Network Monitor uses configurable sensors to track network availability, bandwidth, hardware, and service health. It consolidates disparate infrastructure checks into dashboards and alerts for faster operational response.
Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source monitoring platform for collecting metrics, visualizing infrastructure health, and generating alerts. It helps engineers centralize monitoring across mixed environments instead of maintaining disconnected status checks.
Nagios Core
Nagios Core monitors hosts, services, and network devices through plugins, checks, notifications, and status views. It helps teams detect failed services early and route actionable alerts to responsible operators.
LibreNMS
LibreNMS automatically discovers network devices and monitors them using SNMP, alerts, graphs, and inventory data. It reduces manual device tracking when monitoring routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless infrastructure.
Grafana
Grafana creates dashboards and visualizations from multiple data sources, including metrics, logs, and time-series databases. It helps engineers turn scattered operational data into readable views for troubleshooting and reporting.
Prometheus
Prometheus collects and stores time-series metrics, supports querying, and evaluates rules for alerting workflows. It helps teams investigate changing performance patterns with retained metrics rather than isolated snapshots.
NetBox
NetBox documents network infrastructure through IP address management, device inventory, circuits, racks, and connections. It helps prevent documentation drift by providing a structured source of truth for network assets.
Infoblox NIOS
Infoblox NIOS provides DNS, DHCP, and IP address management functions for enterprise network environments. It helps teams manage address assignments and core network services from a centralized system.
Cisco Packet Tracer
Cisco Packet Tracer simulates Cisco-oriented networks for practicing configurations, testing topologies, and learning networking concepts. It lets engineers validate basic design ideas without requiring physical routers, switches, or cables.
GNS3
GNS3 builds virtual network labs using device images, containers, and interconnected topology simulations. It helps engineers test configurations and failure scenarios before changing production network equipment.
EVE-NG
EVE-NG provides a web-accessible platform for building and running multi-vendor virtual network laboratories. It makes complex lab topologies easier to share and access from a central environment.
PuTTY
PuTTY is a terminal client supporting SSH, Telnet, serial connections, and other remote session protocols. It gives Windows users a straightforward way to access network devices and serial consoles.
SecureCRT
SecureCRT is a terminal emulator that supports secure remote sessions, session management, scripting, and logging. It helps engineers organize frequent device connections and preserve command output during investigations.
Termius
Termius manages SSH connections across desktop and mobile devices with saved hosts and synchronized credentials. It reduces friction when engineers need secure remote access away from their primary workstation.
MobaXterm
MobaXterm combines terminal sessions, SSH tools, graphical forwarding, and file transfer features for Windows users. It reduces context switching by grouping common remote administration tools within one interface.
OpenSSH
OpenSSH provides secure remote login, command execution, tunneling, and file transfer through SSH protocols. It protects remote administration traffic while enabling repeatable access to networked systems and devices.
Tailscale
Tailscale creates private mesh networks between authorized devices using WireGuard-based encrypted connections. It simplifies secure access to distributed infrastructure without exposing management interfaces publicly.
WireGuard
WireGuard is a lightweight VPN protocol and software implementation for encrypted point-to-point network connections. It helps engineers establish secure tunnels with a comparatively simple configuration model.
Postman
Postman sends, tests, documents, and organizes API requests for services and network automation platforms. It helps engineers validate API-driven workflows before embedding requests in scripts or automation.
iPerf3
iPerf3 measures TCP and UDP throughput between endpoints and reports transfer rates, loss, and jitter. It helps isolate whether poor application performance stems from insufficient network path capacity.
mtr
mtr combines traceroute and ping-style measurements to show hop-by-hop latency and packet loss. It helps pinpoint problematic network segments when users report intermittent reachability or slow paths.
PingPlotter
PingPlotter repeatedly traces network paths and visualizes latency and packet-loss trends over time. It helps diagnose intermittent connection complaints by identifying the hop where degradation appears.
SmokePing
SmokePing measures network latency and packet loss with multiple probes and graph-based historical reporting. It helps engineers spot recurring connectivity instability that single point-in-time tests can miss.
ntopng
ntopng analyzes network traffic flows, hosts, protocols, and application usage through a web interface. It helps teams investigate bandwidth consumption when aggregate interface counters lack traffic-level detail.
ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager monitors network devices, interfaces, servers, and services using configurable alerts and dashboards. It helps reduce manual status checking by centralizing infrastructure health signals in one console.
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is a cloud-based observability platform for monitoring infrastructure, networks, applications, and cloud resources. It helps distributed teams correlate operational alerts across mixed environments without maintaining separate monitoring silos.
Datadog Network Monitoring
Datadog Network Monitoring maps network traffic and provides visibility into device performance and flow data. It helps troubleshoot service slowdowns by connecting network behavior with broader infrastructure telemetry.
ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes monitors network paths, internet services, and user experience across enterprise and external networks. It helps isolate whether outages originate within a company network, provider network, or SaaS service.
Kentik
Kentik analyzes network flow, routing, and cloud telemetry for traffic visibility and operational investigation. It helps engineers understand complex traffic patterns across data centers, clouds, and WAN connections.
Auvik
Auvik provides cloud-based network monitoring, device discovery, configuration backups, and topology mapping. It helps lean IT teams maintain network visibility when documentation and device inventories become outdated.
Cisco Catalyst Center
Cisco Catalyst Center manages Cisco enterprise networks through automation, assurance, inventory, and policy workflows. It helps simplify repetitive campus network administration across large collections of Cisco devices.
Aruba AirWave
Aruba AirWave monitors and manages wired and wireless networks, including access points and switches. It helps administrators identify wireless performance issues using centralized client and device visibility.
Juniper Mist
Juniper Mist provides cloud-based management and assurance for Juniper wireless, wired, and WAN networks. It helps teams investigate user connectivity problems with telemetry from network devices and clients.
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard centrally manages Meraki networking devices, including wireless, switching, security, and SD-WAN products. It helps small teams configure and monitor geographically distributed branch networks from a browser.
Palo Alto Panorama
Palo Alto Panorama centrally manages policies, configurations, logs, and device groups for Palo Alto firewalls. It helps security teams apply consistent firewall changes without configuring each appliance individually.
FortiManager
FortiManager centrally manages Fortinet device configurations, policies, firmware, and administrative workflows. It helps network teams reduce configuration drift across multiple Fortinet firewalls and appliances.
Checkmk
Checkmk monitors servers, networks, applications, and cloud services through agents, checks, and dashboards. It helps operators detect infrastructure faults before users report service disruptions.
Icinga
Icinga is an open-source monitoring platform for checking infrastructure availability, performance, and service health. It helps engineers build customized alerting for environments that require flexible monitoring definitions.
Observium
Observium automatically discovers network devices and presents performance metrics, interfaces, sensors, and inventory data. It helps maintain current device visibility when manually updating network monitoring inventories becomes burdensome.
Cacti
Cacti collects network metrics and creates historical graphs using SNMP polling and configurable data sources. It helps engineers review long-term interface utilization when troubleshooting capacity and growth concerns.
Elastic Observability
Elastic Observability collects logs, metrics, traces, and uptime data for infrastructure and application analysis. It helps teams search across operational data when incidents span network, server, and application layers.
Splunk Enterprise
Splunk Enterprise indexes and searches machine data, including logs, events, alerts, and operational records. It helps investigators rapidly examine large log volumes during network incidents and security reviews.
Graylog
Graylog centralizes log collection, search, alerting, and dashboards for infrastructure and security operations. It helps teams analyze device syslogs without manually retrieving records from individual systems.
syslog-ng
syslog-ng collects, processes, routes, and stores log messages from network devices and applications. It helps standardize log handling when devices produce messages in varied formats and destinations.
SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server
SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server receives, filters, alerts on, and archives syslog messages from network devices. It helps administrators respond to important device events without continuously watching console output.
Oxidized
Oxidized backs up network device configurations by retrieving them and storing versioned changes in repositories. It helps engineers recover from configuration mistakes by preserving historical copies of device settings.
Ansible
Ansible automates network device configuration, validation, and orchestration through playbooks and vendor modules. It reduces repetitive CLI changes by applying consistent configurations across many managed devices.
Terraform
Terraform defines and provisions infrastructure resources through declarative configuration files and provider integrations. It helps prevent manual provisioning drift by versioning repeatable network and cloud infrastructure changes.
Nornir
Nornir is a Python automation framework that runs inventory-driven tasks against network devices. It gives engineers a programmable way to execute parallel tasks without building orchestration from scratch.
Cisco NSO
Cisco NSO orchestrates multi-vendor network services using models, templates, and lifecycle automation. It addresses inconsistent service rollouts by enforcing modeled configurations and controlled change workflows.
Netmiko
Netmiko provides Python libraries for connecting to network devices through SSH and sending commands. It simplifies vendor-specific SSH scripting when engineers need to automate routine command-line operations.
NAPALM
NAPALM provides a unified Python API for retrieving state and configuring multiple network platforms. It reduces vendor API differences when teams need portable automation across varied device operating systems.
RANCID
RANCID collects device configurations, tracks revisions, and reports changes through version-control repositories. It helps teams identify undocumented configuration changes by preserving historical device configuration snapshots.
Unimus
Unimus backs up network configurations and automates configuration tasks from a central interface. It reduces recovery risk by maintaining accessible backups and standardizing recurring configuration work.
phpIPAM
phpIPAM manages IP address allocation, subnet documentation, VLAN records, and address-space visibility. It prevents spreadsheet-based addressing errors by centralizing ownership and availability information for subnets.
SolarWinds IP Address Manager
SolarWinds IP Address Manager tracks IP addresses, subnets, DHCP scopes, and DNS records. It helps engineers find available addresses and investigate conflicts without manually reconciling multiple systems.
BlueCat Address Manager
BlueCat Address Manager centrally manages IP address, DNS, and DHCP data and services. It addresses fragmented address management by coordinating network naming and allocation information in one platform.
Device42
Device42 discovers infrastructure assets and documents dependencies, IP addresses, and network connections. It helps teams understand infrastructure relationships when troubleshooting changes across complex hybrid environments.
NetAlly EtherScope nXG
NetAlly EtherScope nXG is a handheld tester for wired and Wi-Fi discovery, testing, and packet capture. It speeds onsite diagnosis by giving field engineers immediate visibility into connectivity and network performance.
Ekahau AI Pro
Ekahau AI Pro designs, surveys, and validates Wi-Fi networks using predictive modeling and measurements. It helps prevent wireless coverage and capacity problems before deployment or during network remediation.
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center centrally manages policies, events, and software for Cisco firewalls. It reduces firewall administration overhead by providing centralized policy control across managed security appliances.
FortiAnalyzer
FortiAnalyzer collects, analyzes, and reports logs from Fortinet security and network devices. It helps engineers investigate security and operational events without manually gathering logs from individual appliances.
Zeek
Zeek passively analyzes network traffic and generates detailed logs describing protocols and observed activity. It provides protocol-level visibility when packet captures alone are too difficult to search and interpret.
Suricata
Suricata is an intrusion detection and prevention engine that inspects network traffic and protocols. It helps detect suspicious traffic patterns through rules and alerts before threats spread further.
Tenable Nessus
Tenable Nessus scans systems and network devices for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposed services. It helps prioritize remediation by identifying known security weaknesses across reachable infrastructure assets.
Rapid7 InsightVM
Rapid7 InsightVM assesses vulnerabilities, tracks asset risk, and supports remediation planning across environments. It reduces uncertainty around patching by connecting discovered vulnerabilities with remediation-focused risk information.
Qualys VMDR
Qualys VMDR inventories assets, identifies vulnerabilities, and supports remediation tracking through a cloud platform. It helps teams consolidate vulnerability visibility when asset inventories and scanning results are scattered.
Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Cisco Secure Network Analytics analyzes network telemetry to identify traffic patterns, anomalies, and potential threats. It helps detect unusual network behavior when security teams lack visibility into east-west traffic.
Riverbed SteelHead
Riverbed SteelHead optimizes application traffic across WAN links using techniques such as data reduction. It helps improve remote application responsiveness when limited WAN bandwidth causes slow user experiences.
F5 BIG-IP
F5 BIG-IP distributes application traffic and provides load balancing, traffic management, and security services. It helps maintain application availability by directing traffic across servers and managing delivery policies.
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Cloudflare Zero Trust applies identity-based access controls to private applications and Internet traffic. It reduces reliance on broad network access by limiting users to authorized applications and services.
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager automates device configuration backups, change tracking, compliance checks, and configuration deployment. It helps engineers recover from accidental changes by preserving versions and comparing configuration differences.
ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager
ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager backs up network configurations, tracks changes, and automates configuration management tasks. It reduces manual configuration auditing by centralizing backups, change alerts, and policy-based compliance checks.
Juniper Apstra
Juniper Apstra provides intent-based data center network automation, validation, and operational visibility across supported fabrics. It helps teams prevent fabric misconfigurations by continuously validating deployed network intent against operational state.
Arista CloudVision
Arista CloudVision centralizes telemetry, configuration workflows, image management, and state monitoring for Arista networks. It simplifies operating distributed Arista devices by providing a shared view of network state and changes.
ExtremeCloud IQ
ExtremeCloud IQ is a cloud management platform for configuring, monitoring, and troubleshooting Extreme wireless and switching infrastructure. It helps administrators manage dispersed access points and switches without relying on separate on-premises management servers.
Ubiquiti UniFi Network
Ubiquiti UniFi Network manages UniFi gateways, switches, access points, clients, and wireless network settings. It gives small teams one interface for diagnosing client connectivity and configuring UniFi network hardware.
MikroTik The Dude
MikroTik The Dude discovers network devices, maps topology, monitors services, and alerts on outages. It helps engineers spot unavailable devices quickly through automatic discovery, visual maps, and service monitoring.
OpenVPN Access Server
OpenVPN Access Server provides centrally managed remote-access VPN services using OpenVPN client connections. It helps organizations provision secure remote connectivity without manually maintaining individual VPN server configurations.
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella delivers DNS-layer security, secure web gateway functions, and cloud-delivered security policy enforcement. It helps block malicious destinations before connections complete, reducing exposure for roaming users and branch networks.
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access is a cloud security service that inspects internet-bound traffic and enforces policies. It helps replace backhauled web traffic architectures by applying security controls closer to users and applications.
AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager
AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager provides visibility and monitoring for AWS Transit Gateway network connections. It helps engineers understand complex cloud routing by visualizing transit gateway topology, events, and metrics.
Azure Network Watcher
Azure Network Watcher supplies diagnostic, monitoring, topology, flow logging, and connectivity tools for Azure networks. It helps troubleshoot Azure connectivity failures by exposing effective routes, security rules, and packet flow evidence.
Google Cloud Network Intelligence Center
Google Cloud Network Intelligence Center offers connectivity testing, topology visualization, performance insights, and firewall analysis. It helps identify cloud network path problems by testing reachability and analyzing configuration-related connectivity failures.
Cisco Modeling Labs
Cisco Modeling Labs creates virtual network labs for designing, testing, and learning network configurations. It lets engineers validate changes in simulated topologies before risking production routers, switches, or firewalls.
containerlab
containerlab deploys containerized network labs from topology definitions for testing network operating systems and automation. It speeds repeatable lab creation by defining complex virtual topologies in version-controlled configuration files.
Batfish
Batfish analyzes network configurations to model forwarding behavior, validate policies, and answer reachability questions. It helps catch routing and access-control errors before deployment by testing configurations against intended outcomes.
IP Fabric
IP Fabric automatically discovers network infrastructure and documents topology, addressing, dependencies, and configuration state. It reduces time spent assembling network documentation by continuously collecting operational data from connected devices.
Forward Networks
Forward Networks builds a mathematical model of enterprise networks for verification, search, and change analysis. It helps engineers assess intended network behavior by examining paths and policy effects across complex environments.
NetBrain
NetBrain automates network documentation, dynamic mapping, troubleshooting workflows, and runbook-based operational tasks. It reduces troubleshooting delays by generating live network maps and guiding repeatable diagnostic procedures.
PathSolutions TotalView
PathSolutions TotalView monitors network infrastructure, server performance, wireless conditions, and application response indicators. It helps isolate whether user complaints originate in network devices, servers, wireless, or application performance.
FRRouting
FRRouting is an open-source routing suite implementing protocols including BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, and RIP. It gives engineers flexible software routing capabilities when building Linux-based routers or network labs.
BIRD Internet Routing Daemon
BIRD Internet Routing Daemon is a routing daemon supporting BGP, OSPF, RIP, and route filtering. It helps operators manage internet routing policies on servers without requiring dedicated proprietary routing appliances.
Kea DHCP
Kea DHCP is an open-source DHCP server supporting IPv4, IPv6, lease management, and extensibility. It helps teams modernize address assignment by providing programmable, scalable DHCP services for IP networks.
PowerDNS
PowerDNS provides authoritative DNS and recursive DNS software with APIs, database backends, and DNSSEC support. It helps automate DNS record management by connecting authoritative DNS service to APIs and external databases.
Open vSwitch
Open vSwitch is a multilayer virtual switch designed for programmable networking and virtualized server environments. It helps connect virtual workloads with configurable switching and tunneling capabilities on host systems.
The remaining selections will expand into automation, cloud networking, security analysis, wireless planning, and operational documentation.