Networks are often the lifeblood of modern businesses, which means that any slowdowns or interruptions can be costly. With the increasing use of applications like VoIP, cloud-based ERP systems, firewalls, and more, the demand for optimal network performance is greater than ever.
Luckily, network performance monitoring is your key to making your network and users run smoothly.
Today, we’ll be giving you an overview of the most important network performance monitoring features to help you be proactive when it comes to network performance.
What Is Network Performance Monitoring?
Network performance monitoring is a term that is now widely recognized among IT specialists and network engineers. It is the process of measuring and analyzing network metrics to define the quality of services offered by the underlying network. Network performance monitoring generally measures the service quality of a network, as seen by the end-user.
It can help you pinpoint and solve network issues before they start affecting users, to improve the end-user experience overall. Network performance monitoring should be continuous in order to be the most effective, which is why businesses turn to Network Performance Monitoring solutions to get the job done.
For nearly all businesses, network performance monitoring occurs with the help of software systems.
A tool, like Obkio Network Performance Monitoring software, will continuously monitor end-to-end network performance and notify you if problems are detected. Whether you’re a team of one or twenty, you can customize the tool for your needs.
Network performance monitoring with software like Obkio is more than just device monitoring. Obkio discovers network issues anywhere along your complete network path. This is becoming more and more important with SaaS and SD-WAN infrastructures. Traditional network monitoring software does not have these same abilities.
Let’s look into some of these features in more detail!
End-to-End Network Monitoring
Network performance monitoring needs to be end-to-end to give you the most complete network overview. A true network performance monitoring software, like Obkio, will monitor network performance throughout your entire network infrastructure, from your LAN to WAN.
This way, you can identify intermittent network issues anywhere along with your network, whether they’ve occurred with your Internet connection, in your firewall, or even with your Voip phone system. Network performance monitoring software can help you achieve 360-visibility using network monitoring agents deployed in strategic network locations.
Network Monitoring in Real-Time
Network problems sometimes seem like they come out of nowhere. If problems are intermittent and hard to pinpoint, it’s even more important to make sure that you can monitor network performance in real-time to catch problems the second they happen.
A true network performance monitoring solution will continuously monitor network performance to provide real-time updates. Obkio’s Network Monitoring Agents send synthetic traffic every 500 ms to measure network performance between each other twice a second. Compared to other solutions, this allows you to continuously monitor network performance instead of executing periodic checks at various intervals. This is key to quickly identifying intermittent issues that cause slowness in networks.
From the End-User Perspective
One important thing to remember when monitoring network performance is to always measure network performance from the end-user perspective. After all, good network performance is based on whether it performs to the end-users expectations.
When using a network performance monitoring software, you can install network monitoring agents at different points within the network architecture to experience your network the way your users would. In some cases, the monitoring agent is installed next to the firewall to monitor ISP performance (WAN) and in other cases at the far-end of the LAN network to replicate how different users along your network are experiencing the network’s performance.
This way, you can easily identify network issues, the way your users would.
Synthetic Traffic
Traditional network monitoring tools measure network performance using a packet capture method, but a modern network performance monitoring solution like Obkio continuously monitors network performance using synthetic traffic.
Network Monitoring Agents exchange UDP traffic to monitor network performance between each pair of Agents. This light traffic is non-intrusive and very secure and doesn’t require any packet capture, which ensures that it respects the users’ privacy and doesn’t require changes to devise configurations.
Distributed Network Monitoring
Nowadays, many businesses are turning to remote offices, storing their data in the Cloud, and moving away from centralized data infrastructures. With distributed architectures becoming the new standard, it’s important to have a distributed monitoring solution that can adapt.
Network performance monitoring solutions with distributed monitoring allows you to assess the performance of separate applications, network devices, and different ends of your network (from WAN to LAN), and identify whether it is a network or application issue.
Distributed network monitoring uses data from multiple networks monitoring agents, about a specific monitored object, or target within a network, in order to determine the performance status of the target independently from conditions that may affect the other agents.
In Conclusion
Network performance monitoring is an essential part of the success of any modern business. It is the key to ensuring that your applications run smoothly, your users stay happy, and your business can run as efficiently as possible.
With network performance monitoring software, you don’t need to take on this task on your own. There are a variety of network performance monitoring tools on the market, and it’s important to find the tool that best fits your business needs. But while you’re on the search, make sure to keep in mind these 5 key features that will truly help you measure, monitor, and optimize network performance for immediate and long-lasting results.
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