Belkin today announced its entry into the network monitoring market with a product targeting SMB networks.

Belkin's Pulse is a network monitoring system built on Jumpnode Systems’ appliance-enabled software (AeS) service platform that combines a plug-and-play appliance with a hosted software solution.

Pulse monitors "anything with an IP address", including Windows PCs, UNIX servers, routers, printers, and managed switches. The product automatically discovers networked devices and configures them from a point-and-click menu. It can monitor devices through SNMP, TCP/IP (ping or port number) or through a Windows agent.

Network and device status is securely relayed to a customized web portal that provides a "dashboard" view of the entire network. The dashboard displays graphic key performance indicators and stores all statistics in a database for charting or export to CSV.

The product can also send alerts by email or pager and automatically escalate to a designated backup. A built-in analog modem can contact the web portal in the event of normal network connection loss and the hosted dashboard service can send an alert if the on-site appliance hasn’t checked in.

Pulse provides secure remote access to the network, without requiring a VPN or firewall modification, or public IP addresses. Using a secure remote access tunnel, IT managers can connect to the Pulse appliance behind their network’s firewall, and then reach servers, routers, and other devices for maintenance and remote management.

Pulse will be available next month in multiple configurations supporting monitoring of 10, 20, or 50 networked devices with one or three years subscription to the hosted Dashboard service. MSRP's range from $1,499 for 10 devices w/ 1 year subscription to $5,999 for 50 devices w/ 3 year subscription.

Tags: Belkin, Jumpnode, Monitoring,

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