Enterprise network monitoring, decoded.
Vendor-neutral guides, how-tos and battle-tested configuration examples — SolarWinds SWQL, Splunk SPL, KQL, PromQL and more. Written for the engineers who actually run the NOC.
Network monitoring is a crowded, noisy market. Every vendor promises single-pane-of-glass observability; few tell you what breaks at 3am, which query actually surfaced the root cause, or what the licence really costs at renewal. NetMon Hub fills that gap — an independent, vendor-neutral reference written by engineers who have run these platforms in production, not by the people selling them.
You'll find honest tool overviews (SolarWinds, Splunk, Zabbix, PRTG, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog and more), task-focused how-tos, and copy-paste configuration examples — SWQL, SPL, KQL and PromQL — each tested against a stated version. Weighing a move off an incumbent? The query converter and our SolarWinds alternatives guide compare the realistic options on capability and total cost of ownership, not marketing.
Everything here is free to read, carries no tracking or advertising, and is corrected when a new release changes the facts.
The query converter translates your existing queries to the equivalent in your new tool — SWQL → Datadog, SPL → PromQL and more — with an honest fidelity rating, not a false promise of 1:1.
Monitoring tools
Prometheus Network Monitoring
A practical guide to using Prometheus with snmp_exporter and Grafana as an open-source network monitoring stack — scrape model, PromQL patterns, Grafana dashboards, and fit guidance.
ZabbixZabbix
Zabbix is a self-hosted, open-source platform for monitoring networks, servers, applications, and cloud. How its items, triggers, templates, and low-level discovery work, and how it compares to SolarWinds NPM and Prometheus.
SolarWindsSolarWinds Platform (Orion): Network Monitoring Overview
What SolarWinds Orion is, what NPM/NCM/NTA actually do, how SWQL fits in, and where it makes sense versus the alternatives.
SplunkSplunk: Log Management & SIEM Overview
How Splunk ingests, indexes and searches machine data, what SPL is, and how Enterprise, Cloud and the free tier differ.
Latest guides
Reading SolarWinds NTA Top-Talkers Reports
How to read a SolarWinds NTA top-talkers report, spot what actually matters, and turn the numbers into concrete action — written for engineers new to NetFlow analysis.
intermediateLibreNMS vs SolarWinds: The Free Open-Source Alternative Compared
How LibreNMS stacks up against the SolarWinds Platform (Orion/NPM) on features, cost, scale and migration effort — and who each one actually suits.
advancedPrometheus + Grafana vs SolarWinds: The Cloud-Native Approach Compared
How a Prometheus + Grafana stack compares to the SolarWinds Platform (Orion/NPM) for network monitoring — scrape vs poll, snmp_exporter, gNMI streaming telemetry, cost and who it suits.
intermediateZabbix vs SolarWinds: The Open-Source Monitoring Workhorse Compared
How Zabbix compares to the SolarWinds Platform (Orion/NPM) on monitoring depth, templating, scaling via proxies, cost and the UX gap — and who each one suits.
beginnerSWQL vs SPL: When to Use Which Query Language
SolarWinds SWQL and Splunk SPL look similar but solve different problems. Here's how they differ and which to reach for.