Tutorials / Monitor Your SMB Network in Under an Ho…

Monitor Your SMB Network in Under an Hour — for Free

Mt
Antony Njagi KigunduCore Mtaalam Technologies

Small businesses do not need a Zabbix cluster to know whether the office router is alive. They need one tool that just works, runs on a machine they already own, and tells them “something is down” on their phone — without a five-figure annual contract.

That is exactly the gap PingTick fills. It is a single executable — no installer, no database to configure, no dependencies. This tutorial gets you from zero to a monitored network in about 45 minutes.

What you will need

  • One Windows machine (desktop or server) that stays on — the monitoring box. Windows 10/11 or Server 2016+.
  • The PingTick executable (available from Core Mtaalam on request).
  • A Telegram account (for phone alerts) — or an SMTP account for email alerts.
  • The IPs or hostnames of the devices you want to monitor.

    Step 1 — Run PingTick

    Copy the executable anywhere (e.g. C:\PingTick\) and double-click it. PingTick:

  • Picks a free local port automatically (zero port-contention logic).
  • Creates its SQLite database next to the executable.
  • Opens its web dashboard in your browser — typically http://localhost:<port>.

    No services to start, no config files to edit, no PATH to set. If you want it silent, right-click the system tray icon and it runs as a background daemon.

    Step 2 — Add the devices that matter

    In the dashboard, add your first monitor. PingTick supports five check types — start with these three:

    CheckWhat it doesExample
    ICMP PingHost reachability + latency + TTL192.168.1.1 — the office router
    TCP PortIs a service actually listening?192.168.1.20:3306 — MySQL server
    SSL/TLSCertificate expiry — days leftmail.example.com

    Ping is a good start, but TCP port checks catch the real outages — a server can be “up” and its database down. Monitor ports for anything that has one.

    Want network traffic visibility? Enable SNMP on a managed switch or router and add it as an SNMP monitor — PingTick will chart throughput per interface. For Windows servers, the WMI monitor reports active network interfaces and byte counters without any agent.

    Step 3 — Set up phone alerts (Telegram)

  • In Telegram, create a bot with @BotFather and copy the token.
  • Get your chat ID (message your bot once, then query getUpdates).
  • In PingTick, add the token + chat ID under Notifications → Telegram.

    That is it. Now when the router stops answering, you get a message on your phone — and when it comes back, another one. Email works the same way via SMTP.

    Step 4 — Get your first report

    Let it run for a day, then open Reports:

  • Daily status report — automatically pushed to Telegram or email each morning.
  • 1-Click analytical report — CSV or PDF, generated client-side with vector rendering. Perfect for your boss, your client (if you are an MSP) or your own records.
  • Speed test — run it over a few days to capture real download/upload speeds and ISP drop patterns. Useful ammunition the next time your provider says “everything looks fine from our side”.

    Step 5 — Set it and forget it

    Hide PingTick in the system tray. It will keep polling every few seconds, storing history locally in SQLite, and alerting only when something actually changes. Check the dashboard when you need to, not because you feel you have to.

    What this costs

    Zero. PingTick is provided by Core Mtaalam as proprietary freeware for SMBs and MSPs. If you would rather have us deploy and manage it for you, that is a service we offer — but the tool itself is yours to run.

    One honest caveat: the monitoring box itself should have a UPS. There is something embarrassing about your outage-monitoring tool going down in the same outage.

    Keep reading

  • Blog: taming 137 million time-series metrics
  • PingTick product page
  • Request PingTick access
  • Keep building

    Want this kind of capability in your business?

    Tell us what you are trying to run — we will tell you the honest way to run it. Free consultation, no obligation.

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