LanTopoLog vs WhatsUp Gold

LanTopoLog discovers, maps and monitors physical network topology on a local network. It uses agentless SNMP discovery and presents a searchable, editable map; the maker says it works with any switch model. Its Switch Port Mapper links physical ports to attached devices’ MAC and IP addresses. Monitoring includes traffic, invalid packets and dropped packets, with threshold alerts sent by email, Telegram or Syslog. Reports export to PDF and Draw.io/Diagrams.net. Browser access and remote control are supported, but publishing requires an external web server. The product is listed for Linux, Windows and web use, though Linux has limited functionality. LanTopoLog 2 costs 50.00 USD once for one local network; the license covers up to three bound switches and cannot be renewed. Discovery may miss connections. After some time, the unregistered version disables web publishing, VLAN IDs, traffic charts and search, and shows demo data. A free plan and trial are listed.

WhatsUp Gold monitors IT infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments, covering networks, systems, traffic, applications, wireless networks, virtual machines, physical servers, cloud resources, storage and SSL certificates. Layer 2/3 discovery creates interactive topology maps of device relationships, dependencies and status. The software can run scripts and policies to address common issues, including restarting services and running SSH commands. Integrations include ServiceNow, OpsGenie, Microsoft Teams, Flowmon, AWS CloudWatch and Azure Monitor; a REST API supports integrations and automation. It monitors Microsoft Hyper-V and connects with VMware vCenter or ESXi for host, VM, datastore and network metrics. Deployment can be on-premises or in the cloud, with distributed pollers for larger environments. Server software requires Windows Server 2019, 2022 or 2025. The Free Edition costs nothing for 10 devices. Business costs $1,229 a year for 50 devices; a 30-day trial is listed. Licensing and technical maximums can require additional licenses, and a single server can poll up to 100,000 metrics with additional scalability pollers.