Simply download this file and double-click it to start installation. The Free Edition consists of a self-contained, 1.17-MB executable. This is a nice feature for anyone who wants to sell bandwidth monitoring services. It also offers an auto start for the monitoring process, and the Paessler logo and copyright notices are removed from the graphs. The biggest difference is that the Professional Edition can be run as a service using FireDaemon or AppToService. The Free Edition and the Professional Edition are similar.

If you prefer the Professional Edition, it costs only $29.95 per computer. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be evaluating the Free Edition. Two versions of PRTG are available at the Paessler Web site: the Free Edition and the Professional Edition. Best of all, there is free version of PRTG. PRTG is a simple utility that monitors a device such as a router or firewall and keeps track of how much bandwidth is being used by the device. However, thanks to a program called Paessler Router Traffic Grapher (PRTG), it is now easier than ever to show upper management exactly how much bandwidth is being used.

At the time, I was able to use Windows performance monitoring to measure how much bandwidth was being used by our server that was acting as a perimeter firewall, so that I could justify a bandwidth upgrade. Of everything I purchased, one of the toughest things to get past the president was additional bandwidth. This task was challenging at times because the president was fairly computer illiterate, so I had to try to explain things in a way that would make him fully understand the technology I was showing him-and do it in a way that would motivate him to buy what was necessary.

The problem was that I had to justify the purchases to the president of the company. It wasn’t that I had a hard time picking out products or services. When I was a CIO for a chain of hospitals, I often found that one of the toughest parts of my job was purchasing. With a free tool called PRTG, you can quantify bandwidth data. Or maybe you suspect that one server is hogging more bandwidth than it needs.

You may think your company is suffering from a bandwidth crunch, but you need some data to back up your claims.

Prtg process monitor