
Mastering some of the tools mentioned below takes some effort but it's definitely worth your time. Once you get hold of these tools, you can easily dissect network data at a microscopic scale.
I'll suggest first trying these tools in a dummy environment before utilizing them for an actual working network system. So, here we go to test these specialized network monitoring applications.

Wireshark is both open source and free at the same time. It can be used to analyze both live network traffic and offline network data. It supports hundreds of protocols and has a powerful filtering mechanism to extract the relevant information from a pile of cryptic network data. The network data captured through this tool can be exported in different formats for both archival and offline analysis purposes.

Whether it's a router malfunction or one of the LAN cables is behaving strangely, Spiceworks monitors all of them and provides you with immediate alerts about the problems arising in your network. It has the capability to monitor the network in real time and to detect the excessive load if any. Its dashboard and reports are easily understandable with no clutter or noise.

It can also be used to monitor popular cloud storage services. Needless to say, monitoring of a wide range of networking hardware and devices is one of its strengths. It also has the capability to monitor different types of database servers. One of my favorite features of this application is the capability of monitoring website uptime.

Whether its network monitoring, server performance reports, VoIP monitoring or general network fault management, OpManager gives you enough power and flexibility to do all these tasks, effectively and easily. It can also be used to monitor the performance of all the virtual machines running on a computer.

Apart from giving network related information, it's also capable of monitoring various health parameters of the server and network nodes. Even if you the network is modified or extended with new devices, it can seamlessly perform the monitoring activity. With support for a large number of popular hardware vendors, it requires minimal setup and configuration.