What is PRTG NMS?
PRTG Network Monitor by Paessler is a comprehensive network monitoring tool that helps
IT teams monitor the health, performance, and availability of the entire IT infrastructure—
servers, switches, firewalls, applications, bandwidth, etc.
It provides real-time visibility and proactive alerts for network issues, helping reduce
downtime and improve performance.
📌 How PRTG Licensing Works (Sensor-based)
➤ What is a Sensor in PRTG?
A sensor is a single monitoring entity. Think of it like one aspect you want to monitor.
Example:
One ping to check if a device is online = 1 sensor
One CPU usage metric = 1 sensor
One bandwidth usage on one port = 1 sensor
A single device (like a router or server) can consume 5 to 20+ sensors, depending on how
much you want to monitor.
➤ Licensing Tiers:
PRTG offers license bundles like:
PRTG 500 – 500 sensors
PRTG 1000, 2500, 5000, etc.
PRTG XL1/XL5 – Unlimited sensors (1 or 5 servers)
So, if the client chooses PRTG 2500, they can configure up to 2,500 sensors across their
entire infrastructure.
🎯 Key Features of PRTG
1. All-in-One Monitoring
Network devices (routers, switches, firewalls)
Servers (CPU, memory, disk usage, uptime)
Cloud services (AWS, Azure)
Applications & services
Bandwidth usage (NetFlow, SNMP, Packet Sniffing)
2. Flexible Sensor Types
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation)
Ping, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, SQL, VMware, etc.
Custom scripts and API support
3. Alerts & Notifications
Threshold-based alerts via:
o Email
o SMS
o Push notifications
o Executable actions (scripts, API calls)
4. Dashboards & Reports
Real-time visual dashboards
Customizable views
Scheduled PDF/email reports
Historical data analysis
5. Auto-Discovery & Maps
Automatically detects devices on your network
Build real-time network topology maps
6. Mobile & Web Access
Access from browser or mobile apps
Supports secure remote access
🧠 How to Explain to Client (Simplified)
"PRTG does not charge you per device. Instead, it charges you based on what you want to
monitor on each device. For example, if you have a firewall and want to monitor its CPU
usage, bandwidth, and uptime, that’s 3 sensors on 1 device. So, 2500 sensors can typically
cover 100 to 400 devices depending on how deep your monitoring is."
👤 Typical Use Cases:
Monitoring critical servers and applications
Keeping an eye on internet link usage
Troubleshooting outages quickly
Monitoring multiple branch networks from one dashboard
