What is network monitoring? Have you ever faced the problem of lack of bandwidth in your network? Do you need to know the amount of internet usage of your users? Have you ever had a problem like your network disconnects and you spend a lot of time trying to find the problem? If your answer is positive, stay with us. In this guide, you will learn what is meant by network monitoring, types of monitoring software, its benefits, and also understand when we will need monitoring.
What is network monitoring?
It is very important and necessary to check the accuracy of the devices that are working in our network and also to check the activity of our users in the network. This will increase our productivity and save time and manpower. So a platform and system is needed to check our network full time.
Network Monitoring Systems or NMS for short is responsible for checking the current traffic in the network. In other words, network monitoring checks whether the network components are all working properly or not. In network monitoring, it doesn’t matter what type of network we use (wireless or cable) or even what devices are used in our network, everything in our network can be monitored and checked.
What is the monitoring method?
Now that you know what network monitoring is, it’s time to learn how it works.
The monitoring software sends a message to the devices in our network and if it receives a response in the form of a ping, it confirms that the device is working properly. These messages are sent at different intervals to ensure the constant availability of devices.
By using monitoring, we will be able to be aware of the failures that are happening and solve the problem before it occurs.
Monitoring systems have capabilities for automatic error correction, these commands are given to them by the network administrator to react appropriately when an error occurs.
When to use network monitoring?
Using monitoring is as costly as it is productive.
When the number of users and network devices of our organization or company has increased and a lot of complexity has been created, it is time to think about establishing a proper monitoring service.
Of course, in companies whose task is to host customer services and the activities of other businesses are directly dependent on them, network monitoring has become a requirement.
What are the benefits of monitoring?
- Reduce costs
- Always access
- Solve the problem automatically
- Increasing the life of devices
- Reduction of manpower
- Security of sensitive corporate information
- More peace of mind when errors and outages occur
Monitoring is suitable for which companies?
This system increases productivity and monitoring.
With professional control of systems and hardware performance
If a computer is not working properly, this system detects it and informs about it.
Prevent server disruption
If you have an online store to sell products, you must always be available to customers. Imagine a disturbance in the server room of your store. Monitoring prevents the sudden interruption of the company’s services to customers by preventing the interruption of the server.
Saving time
In companies where this system is implemented, employees work more safely and devote more time to their work. Because if there is a problem in the systems, they will receive the problem report through monitoring.
What are the steps of setting up the monitoring system?
To set up a dynamic monitoring service in your network, you must first prepare a proper map of your network. In this map, the types of physical network, the type of communication and its dimensions, as well as the types and types of equipment in the network, such as servers, switches, routers, even racks, server rooms, etc., should be covered.
After the map is determined, you should determine what equipment needs monitoring and if necessary, install the appropriate agent on them. After that, it’s time to look for the most suitable monitoring software for your network.
It is important to note that one monitoring software may not meet all your needs, when you need to use several software to monitor your network.
What are network monitoring software?
In this section, we will introduce the issue of what is network monitoring software?
Network monitoring software is a network monitoring tool that provides an environment for us to view our entire network along with equipment and how to use bandwidth. In this software, you can add or remove devices for monitoring, also define bandwidth limits for ports, create a series of predefined activities to be executed when an error occurs, and many other things that are very useful for IT managers.
Below are some network monitoring software:
- solarwinds
- zabbix
- PRTG
- ManageEngine
Each of these softwares has its own advantages, which we will review and compare in other articles.
What are the types of network monitoring?
Hardware monitoring
In hardware monitoring, its correct operation is checked regularly and periodically. For example, in servers, the health of fans, Raid, hard drives, etc. is checked.
Monitoring services and software
In this case, the accuracy of services such as Active Directory or DHCP is checked and even the backup service is checked. Another type of this monitoring is to check the correctness of the performance and availability of the database. The unavailability of the database makes most of the software that use it useless.
Monitoring services and software
Another example is website monitoring. Today, websites have become key parts of some organizations, so their constant availability is very important. By editing the website, you can check the bandwidth, the number of active users, etc. and increase the resources if needed.
bandwidth monitoring
One of the important things you need to know in monitoring is what network traffic monitoring is. By determining the pattern of network bandwidth consumption, it is possible to specify limits on ports during peak usage to prevent outages and slow down other services.
Conclusion
As mentioned, network monitoring may be expensive for you at first, but after implementing it and passing the implementation stage, when you see its benefits and the ease of your work, you will surely think why you should start walking sooner. You did not create a monitoring service. So, if you are the IT manager of a collection, make this one of your work priorities.
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