With everything being digital, it has become paramount for every organization to take care of their network infrastructure, as businesses heavily depend on their system networks these days. The network performance has become essential, and if it fails or reaches its limits, there will be an adverse effect.
These adverse effects will cause time, money, and resources. Before you even start monitoring the network, you should analyze the importance of it. Do you need this monitoring? What is the sole purpose of it? Are you using it for monitoring a specific issue, or do you just want to analyze the entire theme of the network? No matter what is the reason, you should have a predefined goal set in place before you even start network monitoring.
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Significance of Network Monitoring:
The network monitoring solutions work in real-time taking care of your network. If there is a problem or issue present in your environment, the network monitoring software will start analyzing it and will inform the support team immediately thereby reducing the time taken to resolve the issue and the adverse impact it may have on the organization.
The reduction of this time is essential as it helps in troubleshooting the issues almost immediately. You will get to know about any kind of performance issues present in your network, which goes undetected if monitored by individual teams.
These network related issues are immense, and although the margin of damage is less, it can affect the network in various ways that you cannot even imagine. You should be aware of the performance issues that are affecting your network and dragging it down.
How Troubleshooting Helps
You need to explore the depths present in your network environment to troubleshoot the problems. You will be able to diagnose the pain points along with it. For getting this work done, you should be able to gather as much data related to the network possible.
There are so many tools present in the market that will help in gathering this data. However, it is always advisable to use the tool that perfectly suits your network size.
Why Port Mirroring is Essential for traffic analysis
This feature is another vital aspect that you have to look at in this scenario. There are so many tools that will help in checking your traffic. However, if the host of your network is different, then it is significant for you to configure the port mirroring. You can also use specific inline tap by purchasing the hardware. The port mirroring is supported on most of the managed switches, and it has become one of the central features in network monitoring for a long time now. Sometimes the traffic in a particular network can be in large volumes, and mirroring it, is not an easy task. The port mirroring may even crash in the process. This scenario is where the capture filters become invaluable.
They will sort out some millions of packets in a minute and gives you a clear picture of the traffic with ease.
How Analysis of Traffic Assists
There are various tools like flow and Netflow, which allows you to analyze network traffic. All you have to do is to take and consider a sample of the network for understanding its performance. Most of the managed switches will give you an option to view every flow. In plain words, you will be enabled to see who, where, when, and how a transaction is processed.
Various tools will help in handling and processing this data for every network transaction. However, you need to pick a tool that is effective and feasible to use. Further, this kind of data will help you in analyzing who is using your network and what is the bandwidth used.
Best Practices in Network Monitoring
There are various types of network monitoring options that you can see in the technological world. The continuous monitoring of the network is significant, along with proper protection.
Here we are going to see some of the best practices in network monitoring that you can adopt.
- Baseline Network Behavior: Baselining network behaviour is one of the most common methods and practices that you have to follow. The admin needs to know what is wrong in the network and what he or she can do about it. To understand whether the network is performing effectively or not, the admin needs to conduct a baseline check. Once the baseline parameters and its elements are clear, the admin can start using it to set the threshold values.
- Escalation Matrix: Although network monitoring software alerts a particular person about the network issues, sometimes the issues are not resolved. The main reason behind this is not alerting the right person. There are different types of issues and problems in networks, and obviously, different people will be monitoring them. The organization will set whom to inform or alert about the issue, and the matrix will get that thing executed.
- Reporting: For information to travel from one system to another, it has to go through many layers of the network. If the transmission fails, any of these layers can be held responsible. Identifying the right layer is the most imperative aspect here. This issue can be sorted out with the help of reporting. If the performance and the result of transmission in each layer are reported, then it is pretty easy for the support team to know at which layer there is a problem.
- Proper Configuration Management: Improper configurations even though small can create havoc in the network system. This scenario is the reason why every network needs a proper configuration management system. Today, configuration management has become a proactive part of every network monitoring system.
Moving Forward
Motadata is a leading network monitoring software to track and monitor network efficiently. With an intuitive user interface and automated discovery of network devices, Motadata can be effortlessly deployed. It keeps track of alterations and swiftly pinpoints the performance bottlenecks. It further identifies the actual trouble maker, that too, with detailed information. Ultimately, it is a highly efficient network performance monitoring tool that is quite simple to install and use.
This is Rohan, I’m a Digital marketing Expert, Full time Content Writer and founder of BoxerTechnology.com I can help people across the world through my articles. I am sharing the latest stories from companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Amazon.