Basics of Network Monitoring

What is Network Monitoring?

In today's world, the term network monitoring is widespread throughout the IT industry. Network monitoring is a critical IT process where all networking components like routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and VMs are monitored for fault and performance and evaluated continuously to maintain and optimize their availability. One important aspect of network monitoring is that it should be proactive. Finding performance issues and bottlenecks proactively helps in identifying issues at the initial stage. Efficient proactive server monitoring can prevent network downtime or failures.

Why is network monitoring important?

Network monitoring is essential for maintaining a reliable and efficient IT infrastructure. Here’s why:

1. Quick issue resolution: Identifies the exact cause of network issues, enabling faster resolution and minimizing downtime.
2. Ensures network uptime: Monitors network availability proactively to ensure consistent uptime and performance.
3. Enhances capacity planning: Provides detailed reports to forecast network usage and plan for future resource needs.
4. Centralized control: Offers complete oversight of the network environment through a unified monitoring console.
5. Visualizes network topology: Displays critical network devices and their connections with real-time network mapping.
6. Proactive alerts: Sends timely notifications about potential issues, allowing administrators to address them before they escalate.
7. Improves operational efficiency: Streamlines network management, reducing manual intervention and optimizing workflows.

Implementing network monitoring helps businesses stay ahead of disruptions, ensuring seamless operations and better IT performance.

What are the functions of a network monitoring system?

The main objective of a network monitoring tool is to cut-off the unnecessary load to the network monitor, at every step possible by:

• Monitoring only the essentials
• Optimizing the monitoring interval
• Choosing the right protocol
• Setting thresholds

How does network monitoring work?

Monitoring essential network devices

Faulty network devices impact network performance. This can be eliminated through early detection, and this is why network device monitoring is of utmost importance. In effective network monitoring, the first step is to identify the devices and the related performance metrics to be monitored. Devices like desktops and printers are not critical and do not require frequent monitoring, whereas servers, routers, and switches perform business critical tasks but at the same time have specific parameters that can be selectively monitored.

Optimizing the network monitoring interval

Both the critical and non-critical devices however require monitoring, hence the second step, configuring monitoring interval. Monitoring interval determines the frequency at which the network devices and its related metrics are polled to identify the performance and availability status. Setting up monitoring intervals can help to take the load off the network monitoring and reporting tools and, in turn, your resources. The interval depends on the type of network device or parameter being monitored. Availability status of devices has to be monitored at the least interval of time, preferably every minute. CPU and memory stats can be monitored once in every 5 minutes. The monitoring interval for other metrics like Disk utilization can be extended and is sufficient if it is polled once every 15 minutes. Monitoring every device at the least interval will only add unnecessary load to the network and is not quite necessary.

Choosing the right network protocol

Get to know "What are protocols in network monitoring and types of network protocols?" here.

With the devices identified and the monitoring intervals established, selecting the right network protocol is the next step. When monitoring a network and its devices, a common good practice is to adopt a secure and non-bandwidth consuming network management protocol to minimize the impact it has on network performance. Most of the network devices and Linux servers support SNMP(Simple Network Management Protocol) and CLI protocols and Windows devices support WMI protocol. SNMP is one of the widely accepted network protocols to manage and monitor network elements. Most of the network elements come bundled with anSNMP agent. They just need to be enabled and configured to communicate with the network management system (NMS). Allowing SNMP read-write access gives one complete control over the device. Using SNMP, one can replace the entire configuration of the device. The best network monitor helps the administrator take charge of the network by setting SNMP read/write privileges and restricting control for other users.

Setting up monitoring thresholds

Network downtime can cost a lot of money. In most cases, the end-user reports a network issue to the network monitoring team. The reason behind this is a poor approach to a proactive enterprise network monitor. The key challenge in real-time network monitoring is to identify performance bottlenecks proactively. This is where thresholds play a major role in network monitoring applications. Threshold limits vary from device to device based on the business use case.

Instant alerting based on threshold violations

Configuring thresholds helps in proactively monitoring the resources and services running on servers and network devices. Each device can have an interval or threshold value set based on user preference and need. Multi-level threshold can assist in classifying and breaking down any fault encountered. Utilizing thresholds, network monitoring alerts can be raised before the device goes down or reaches critical condition.

What are the key benefits of network monitoring?

The five key benefits of monitoring a network are:

Why monitor network with a network monitoring software?

The process of network monitoring and management is simplified and automated with the help of network monitoring software and network monitor tools. From a wide range of available network management solutions, it is important to choose a network monitor system that can effectively tackle network bottlenecks and performance woes which might have a negative impact on network performance.

With the sudden spurt in enterprise network monitoring andremote network monitoring, a wide range of Windows network monitorand Linux network monitor and network monitoring solutionsare available in the market. An effectivenetwork management systemwill contain a built-in network monitor tool that can help admins cut down on the workforce and automate basic troubleshooting techniques.

How to choose the best network monitoring solution?

An effective network monitor software should have the ability to:

• Visualize your entire IT infrastructure with further classifications based on type or logical groups.
• Automatically configure devices and interfaces with predefined templates.
• Monitor and troubleshoot network, server, and application performance to ensure network optimization.
• Implement advanced network performance monitoring techniques toquickly resolve network faults by getting to the root of the problem.
• Get advanced reporting features with provision to schedule and automatically email or publish the reports.

Monitoring network has become an important aspect of managing any IT infrastructure. Similarly, a network assessment is considered an elementary step in aligning your IT infrastructure towards the business goals, enabled by network monitoring tools. Learn how to assess your network for identifying security threats and performance bottlenecks.

Learn more about ManageEngine OpManager - the network software trusted by over a million network administrators around the world.