Managing the network and detecting security threats in an era of digital transformation have been challenging for network admins, as new technologies introduce new access dynamics. To address these performance-related challenges, IT admins need to monitor traffic, as issues can arise from any endpoint.
However, most complications lie in choosing how to monitor network traffic, because the IT team has to choose a solution that offers multi-vendor support and provides detailed visualization of their network infrastructure's traffic. But if teams are using multiple tools, the process won't be streamlined and it will leave major gaps.
As digital transformation isn't slowing down anytime soon, your traffic monitoring should comprise a solid monitoring strategy that helps in smooth transition. Here's a checklist to test how strong your traffic monitoring strategy is.
Though you get deep visibility into your network infrastructure, including devices, applications, and their traffic, not every bit of data is critical to track. Effective monitoring requires careful consideration over what data should be tracked regularly.
For example, it's important to track metrics of primary importance, like tracking mission-critical websites, server logs, and file transfers to make sure they have consistent availability. You need to strike the right balance between gaining visibility and choosing which critical metrics need to be monitored.
Not every organization can simply buy more bandwidth to address every network issue. Most performance issues can start when the bandwidth that is specifically limited for business-critical applications is used by other unimportant apps. In these cases, prioritizing the apps that should get the most bandwidth is necessary. You must implement strategies to build policies, so that the traffic coming to your network is filtered only when it meets your rules.
Bandwidth is an important resource that requires close attention and preplanned strategies for recovering it when things go wrong. For example, your interfaces might be utilizing all of your bandwidth, but you may not even know about it until performance issues grow so bad that applications won't even open.
A recovery plan is important in these cases, since you can choose the first course of action when your network's baseline behavior is crossed.
Lastly, the tool you use is what determines your strategies. Without the right tool, your strategies and monitoring may only result in negative outcomes and facing challenges like vendor support and overlaps in data.
Organizations implement a lot of tools to monitor their dynamic network infrastructure under the misconception that they could get broader visibility and tackle downtime. But having a centralized tool that fits all the requirements can help users monitor their networks while gaining maximum visibility, requiring minimal effort and time.
For this, you need to consider a Windows or Linux network traffic monitoring tool that comes with integrations and add-ons. The network traffic monitor you have should also be easy to implement and offer flexibility to customize it.
Imagine your organization's network is diversified with wireless connections, cloud services, and software designed as SaaS applications, yet problems sometimes reach remote machines or servers, thereby affecting the performance of applications. With such a broad view, pinpointing which element is at fault when your users face slow network connection without a centralized tool is essentially guesswork.
On the other hand, with NetFlow Analyzer's
NetFlow Analyzer is a flow-based network traffic monitoring tool that supports technologies like NetFlow, sFlow, JFlow, NetStream, and so on. You can discover traffic information of your flow- and non-flow-exporting devices, and find how your bandwidth is being utilized.
Effective network traffic monitoring comprises of the right strategy and an ideal tool that can be customized to your operational needs. Using our real time network traffic monitor, you can explore the following advantages:
Having doubts if NetFlow Analyzer is the best traffic monitoring solution for your organization? See how it stands above other traffic analyzers on the market, or contact our support team to explore NetFlow Analyzer's benefits.