You can trace to more than one target at a time within one PingPlotter instance, and each target can be managed independently of the others (unlike in MultiPing, where each target's schedule, packet size and other settings are all shared).

Adding targets to PingPlotter Pro

To use this capability, enter your first target's name or IP address in the "Address to Trace" field and hit either the "Trace" button or the enter key. Now, to add an additional target, either use the "File" -> "New Target" menu option, or hit the little icon next to the "Address to trace" line:

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If these entries are disabled, that means PingPlotter's already waiting for you to enter a new target address in "Address to trace:" and get started.

Multiple targets will show up as tabs. In addition, each target will be listed as a menu entry in the "Workspace" menu to make it easy to select.

All menus and controls are connected to the currently selected target. Switching between targets will switch the controls to that target.

To close a target, just hit the "X" (i.e.: Close) button above the graph on the right next to the thumbtack. This will stop data collection and get rid of all collected data from memory.

PingPlotter Pro works great up to about 40 targets.  Somewhere around this number, it starts to get a bit unwieldy because of the number of tabs - and entries in the Workspace menu.  We've had it up to 250 targets, but this isn't an entirely smooth experience - just from a user interface standpoint.

Remember that for each target, we're doing an entire trace.

One primary reason to use PingPlotter Pro to monitor multiple targets, rather than just using multiple instances of PingPlotter standard, is that PingPlotter Pro can make sure multiple targets don't all get queried at the same time. We always want a bit of time between each packet so we don't overwhelm the local connection and impact our measurements by sending too much data. PingPlotter Pro makes sure time spacing is honored between each packet - no matter how many targets are being monitored.

Docking, floating etc.

By default, each target shows as its own tab. That works, but might not be exactly what you're after. Maybe you want 10 targets all displayed filling your high resolution "war room" screen. You can certainly do this.

Each target is living in its own "dock" control. Just grab a tab and drag it away from the PingPlotter main application (or double-click a tab to undock and redock it). If you drop it someplace else on your screen, you'll now have a "stand-alone" display for that target. You can also dock a target on the side of the PingPlotter window so you can have side-by-side (or above / below) display in the PingPlotter main program instance. There are a number of combinations here.

One of our favorite setups with 5 to 10 targets is to dock the trace graphs to the side, and then set them to auto-hide (this is done by hitting the push-pin button at the right side of the caption). If you leave the summary screen visible in the center and auto-hide the targets on one (or more!) sides, you can easily access them by floating your mouse over, by selecting that target from the "Workspace" menu or right-clicking on that summary graph and selecting “Show Trace Graph”