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I am looking for a relatively cheap or free monitoring software that will monitor my VPN connections with our remote firewalls and alert me if a connection goes down. It would be helpful if it would record connection info such as speed and up time for analysis too. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by DimaYasny

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As said, the requirement is simple: cheaply monitor site-to-site VPN tunnels, alert on outages, and collect uptime/throughput for analysis. There are two pragmatic paths: use an open-source network monitor that polls device telemetry and graphs counters, or build a tiny "synthetic check" that tests tunnel reachability and parses device status. 's mention of paid software is valid if you want a packaged UI, but the free tools below cover most needs.

Quick deployment workflow:

  • Inventory each remote firewall/router and identify available telemetry: SNMP (prefer SNMPv3), device APIs, syslog, or SSH/CLI.
  • Start with simple checks: interface/tunnel operational status + periodic ping across the tunnel (synthetic test). These detect both negotiation failures and traffic blackholes.
  • Collect interface counters (ifOperStatus, ifInOctets/ifOutOctets) or vendor tunnel OIDs for throughput and uptime; store and graph them.
  • Configure alerts: immediate on tunnel down, and threshold alerts for sustained latency/packet loss or throughput drops.
  • Retain data long enough for trend analysis; ensure NTP is in place for accurate timestamps.

Free tools to consider: Zabbix (SNMP, alerts, graphs), LibreNMS (network auto-discovery, interface graphs), Nagios Core (flexible checks/plugins), and Smokeping (latency history). Netdata (netdata.cloud) is useful for real-time visibility.

Cautions: avoid exposing SNMPv2c to the Internet, prefer SNMPv3 or VPN-only management access; tune polling intervals to avoid device load; synchronize clocks with NTP; and validate any vendor-specific OIDs before deploying.

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Member Avatar for Freaktech

Yeah tried that, but doesn't bring up any software solutions. Only hardware for setting up the VPNs which I already have.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

first link I found

Member Avatar for Freaktech

Thanks I saw that one, but it is a bit more then I want to spend.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

in that case write your own :)

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