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.
- 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