For a business to function at its full potential, it's critical to have an uninterrupted, healthy network. The same network connects various ends of the business, meaning disruptions or slowdowns can affect everyone on your network.
From an IT infrastructure management standpoint, the key to maintaining smooth business operations is to keep a close eye on the network path, from source to destination, and ensure the path is clear of obstacles. Obstacles on a network path can surface in the shape of network interference, network congestion, hardware and software issues, physical distance between source and destination, physical structures, and so on.
Even in a simple, small-sized network, the amount of data and number of transactions moving from one end to the other will be significant. But it's a huge challenge to oversee each journey of these data packets—from the source to the endpoint–to detect any delays or anomalies. Things become more challenging as the size and complexity of the infrastructure scales.
Monitoring network paths in larger organizations is critical. Imagine a large enterprise's internal communications going down for a day due to a network path slowdown or disruption. Such an outage can bring a stop to normal business functions until it's resolved. Moreover, emails, video conferencing, instant messaging, or voice over IP (VoIP) are all dependent on network paths, and a disruption can inevitably paralyze a company's external communications with stakeholders.
For both large and small networks, a real-time network path analysis tool is vital for keeping a close eye on critical parameters of the infrastructure. With the help of network path analysis, you can resolve dynamic issues, monitor latency and packet loss metrics at any end of the network, and ensure a high quality of service to your end users.
OpManager Plus is a complete infrastructure monitoring solution that offers advanced availability and performance monitoring features. It includes an in-house network path analysis tool to help you visualize and monitor your network path's performance. With this tool you can track the hop-by-hop performance across multiple paths between source(OpManager server) and destination, visualize network routes, and maintain a history of paths to help you identify communication delays in each path traversed.
With OpManager Plus' enhanced diagram of all TCP requests, critical paths between the probe and its destination can be visualized seamlessly. The tool identifies individual hops, tracks data packet time during individual hops, and measures transit delays and outages across your network. OpManager uses TCP SYN packets instead of ICMP or UDP packets, which may be blocked in newer, secure networks. The network path analysis tool backs up collected data and path history for analyzing hop-by-hop patterns, identifying the root cause of packet loss or latency, and predicting network outages.
Seamlessly visualize traffic patterns to enable continuous analysis of your infrastructure: The network path analysis tool depicts a birds-eye view of all the network paths within the infrastructure. The path taken by a packet to reach its destination will be shown end-to-end, with relevant information like time taken between each hop and the overall duration. You can hover over each hop along the network path mapping to see response time and latency information. Moreover, OpManager Plus' advanced probing capability lets you detect the network analysis path over LAN and WAN.
Obtain comprehensive performance insights into your network paths: Using a network path monitor, you can collect performance data for each node and link on a network path and gain a quick understanding of how well each component is working. This enables IT admins to identify areas that need improvement. By analyzing the intensity of traffic in each node, you can optimize accordingly before nodes or links get impacted. You can configure thresholds for latency and packet loss and receive instant alerts whenever they are exceeded, helping you fix issues before they escalate.
Be notified with alerts in the event of issues or errors: OpManager Plus' alerting capabilities start with creating notification profiles, which alert you in the event of unavailability or performance issues with network devices. As part of network path monitoring, you will be alerted when the latency or packet loss between source and destination during data transfers is detected to be critically high.
Learn more about OpManager Plus