FreeNATS

FreeNATS
Original author(s)	David Cutting
Developer(s)	PurplePixie Systems
Initial release	March 2, 2008^[1]
Stable release	1.09.2 / 2010-04-10^[2]
Operating system	Unix-like
Platform	PHP / MySQL
Available in	English
Type	Network monitoring
License	GNU General Public License
Website	www.purplepixie.org/freenats

FreeNATS (the Free Network Automatic Testing System) is an open source network monitoring software application^[3] developed by David Cutting under the banner of PurplePixie Systems.

FreeNATS is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Overview

Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, ICMP (ping)^[4]
Limited monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage) on a majority of network operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and Linux through agent-based testing
Plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks depending on needs, by using PHP (or other languages or scripts wrapped in PHP)
Some ability to define network host hierarchy using "master" nodes allowing link failures to suspend monitoring^[5]
Event-based system allowing failure notifications to be sent in customised email (suitable for email-to-SMS) or to utilise third-party notification scripts via a plug-in
Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
Automatic data retention cleanups
Full web-interface for management and monitoring
Ability to "publish" views and graphs within third-party web pages