A
crucial aspect of the job of a network administrator is to monitor the entire
network for traffic usage, performance, availability, and faults and to respond
immediately to problems. A network monitoring tool is basically a
software-hardware combination or software-based which watches the network from
one to another, collecting data on numerous performance metrics, among which
include latency, bandwidth, CPU use and responsiveness of hosts. Comprehensive
network monitoring foundations can track the behavior of the network and issues
alerts once it goes beyond a performance threshold, whether this means dipping
below the acceptable level or once there is a spike in network traffic.
Majority of today’s network
monitoring products can also work well for the usual small and midsized
networks, whether wireless or wired. However, more complex networks, such as
distributed environments and enterprise networks, require a comprehensive platform
which offers visibility into virtual and physical servers, WAN or wide area
network links, SDN or software defined network architecture, network based
applications, cloud based services and the increasing number of mobile devices
connecting to the network.
Features
of Network Monitoring
A comprehensive network monitoring
product must have the ability to monitor, analyze and detect a network as well
as its devices in real time, which allow an admin to respond according to the
alerts and warnings. At a minimum, the tool you will choose must at least be
something that is moderately easy to configure and implement and it must also
be able to support several vendor devices. Your chosen product must at least
include device and node inventorying, auto-discovery, configurable and
automatic trouble warnings and alerts, and these must also be tied together
through the web based centralized management interface.
This interface must then come with
a dashboard which features easy to read tables and graphs which offer various
views of the network status. This must also come with a network topology map if
not the ability of generating one together with commands for troubleshooting
issues and modifying network settings. Certain interfaces offer reporting and
viewing only.
Nice to
Have Features of Network Monitoring Tool
The ability to spot both
historical and expected trends can be a very useful resource for the technical
staff. The trend data allows an administrator to look back at the network
performance data while the trend predictions offer a sneak peek into the most
likely future of the network performance according to the past behavior.
The automatic capacity planning is
a very handy feature which is not really required by all types of environment.
This facilitates optimization and management of network infrastructure through
sending an alert to the network administrator every time available bandwidth,
memory or network capacity will soon exceed.
The Bottom
Line
It is important to search for a
comprehensive network monitoring tool which will meet your current needs and
offer scalability for future expansion of your network. There are a lot of
choices out there so make sure you choose only the best.
For
more information please view this blog
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