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What is Network Monitoring?
Network monitoring is the process of constantly monitoring a computer network for problems such as slow traffic or component failure. Network Monitoring tools are always scanning the network and are designed to automatically notify network administrators via text, email, or other application such as Slack when a problem occurs. Network monitoring software differs from network security or intrusion detection systems in that network monitoring is focused on internal network issues such as overloaded routers, server failures, or network connection issues that could impact other devices.
Network monitoring solutions can also initiate failover to remove problem device or circuits from duty until remediation can be performed to repair the issue. Ideally, a proactive network monitoring solution will prevent downtime or failures before they occur by identifying anomalies that could lead to outage if unchecked.
Continuous monitoring is critical to maintaining network integrity. The best network monitoring tools provide visualization or a dashboard that provides at-a-glance status of monitored network components, indicating any out-of-norm parameters that require further examination or components such as switches, routers, firewalls, servers, and software services, applications, or URLs that could be the source of network disturbances. For maximum effectiveness, a network monitoring system should include high availability components so that a hardware or software failure of systems running the network management tool can be automatically remediated by fail-over to another network monitoring installation. Network Monitoring should provide:
Visualization of the organization’s complete IT and network infrastructure
Monitoring, troubleshooting, and remediation of network performance issues.
Root cause analysis tools when problems occur.
Dashboard with clear visualization tools and reports
Migrating Existing Apps to the Cloud? 5 Key Network Considerations
VMware vRealize Network Insight - Dummies Guide
What are the key benefits of Network Monitoring?
The most important benefit of network monitoring is visibility. Having an easy-to-understand, at-a-glance picture of all connected devices across the organization is important, but visualizing the flow of data across devices and networks enables network administrators to quickly identify and remediate any problems – emergent or potential – before outages occur.
Automating this critical task leads to a higher utilization of critical IT resources. Time not spent putting out network fires can be spent working on projects that create bottom-line value for the organization.
Network monitoring also provides an early warning indication of the utilization of existing infrastructure, giving IT a heads-up indicating the need for upgrading or adding capacity to given network components.
Finally, by comparing traffic to known baselines for a given time of day and season, network monitoring tools can identify unexpected spikes in network traffic that can indicate a problem brewing, whether due to increased demand or cyberattack.
Why is Network Monitoring important?
Network failures can impact overall IT performance and cause availability issues across the organization. Network monitoring has several important benefits to the organization by enabling early detection of issues including:
Cost savings realized by reducing downtime and speeding remediation by assisting with root cause analysis or displaying network elements that are being over- or under-utilized. Network resources can focus on productive tasks instead of constantly looking for problems.
Performance problems can be caught before they impact business operations or lead to a degraded customer experience.
Network security enhancements can be realized by detecting unexpected traffic or unknown devices connecting to the network. These could be early indicators of cyberattacks or ransomware attempts.
Usage spikes such as logon storms or seasonal traffic jumps can be indicated early on, enabling network administrators to take remedial action to ensure that usage is not impacted.
Rogue application usage can be caught. Each business unit may have a group of applications they want tracked and network monitoring can establish which applications and users are doing what on the network.
How does Network Monitoring work?
There are many types of network monitoring. For instance email network monitoring might involve sending test emails and measuring the response time, while web server testing could entail sending an HTTP request to access a given page and log the time until it is served.
First, devices and network connections are identified as are their related performance metrics. Next, the organization determines how frequently to monitor each function. For example, client laptops and printers are not ‘network critical’ and can have much longer monitoring intervals than routers, switches, and servers that comprise the network backbone.
Most network monitoring tools utilize the simple network management protocol (SNMP) to manage and monitor the elements of the network. Most network components are delivered with an SNMP agent which can be used to reconfigure devices, take them offline if they are performing erratically, or to collect information about the device’s performance. Network monitoring systems ‘ping’ the various system ports, and If a device reports a parameter outside of the established threshold an alert is automatically generated so remediation can occur before device failure. Typically, network components are pinged between once a minute and once an hour.
Some network devices such as routers and switches utilize the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to relate information regarding internet protocol (IP) operations and to create error messages when devices fail.
What are the types of Network Monitoring?
Different devices and protocols are used in network monitoring.
Network packet analyzers examine the data in each packet moving through the network, and the information within the packets can determine if they are being routed correctly, if employees are visiting prohibited websites, or if sensitive data including personally identifiable information (PII) such as social security number is being exfiltrated from the network.
Application and services monitoring focuses on those systems and devices needed to maintain network integrity to ensure they are operating within normal limits as well as indicating which applications are being used by which business units organization-wide.
Access Management monitoring ensures that intruders are not granted access to network resources, for example if an employee suddenly logs on from an IP address on another continent. This can quickly spot network vulnerabilities and help remediate them and detect intruders before they can do harm.
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Network Monitoring Definition
Network Monitoring, a subset of network management, is a systematic attempt by a computer network to identify slow or failing components before they cause problems. For example, crashed, frozen, or overloaded servers; failed switches; failing routers; and other troublesome components can all potentially cause outages or network failures. Should some problem arise and trigger an outage, it is the role of the network monitoring system to alert the network administrator in a timely way.
Typically, administrators monitor and manage a network using network monitoring tools and software applications. These network monitoring services help users monitor performance, and detect whether a web server is properly connected to worldwide networks and functioning as expected. In fact, many network performance monitoring tools also offer an end-to-end visualization of the networks and the applications.
Diagram depicts Avi Networks network monitoring architecture.
FAQs
How Does a Network Traffic Monitoring System Work?
The first step of effective network monitoring is identifying the devices to be monitored and their related performance metrics. The next step is selecting an appropriate monitoring interval.
Routers, servers, and switches perform business-critical tasks, so these components demand more frequent monitoring. In other words, internet traffic monitoring intervals rely upon particular parameters and usage and should be selected based on the facts of a specific situation. The best systems allow users to create customized alerts.
A network monitoring design should cover every aspect of IT infrastructure, such as the connectivity, network, and security systems. It should ideally include a single-pane-of-glass view into the network, allow administrators to monitor devices seamlessly, and offer network maintenance, problem detection, reporting, and resolution.
Every web traffic monitoring system should also offer reports for a range of users, including systems administrators, network administrators, and IT management. Finally, a secure network monitoring system should be user-friendly, and offer basic drill down and reporting functionalities.
What Does a Network Monitoring Tool Do?
Network monitoring tools and systems constantly monitor a network’s health and reliability by tracking and logging network parameters and searching for trends. A network monitoring system will watch and compare data transmission rates (throughput), uptime/downtime rates, error rates, response times to inputs and requests (both user-generated and automated), and use-time percentages to parameter thresholds that users set in advance. When levels reach those thresholds, the network monitoring system triggers an alarm and initiates network fault management processes.
There is more than one way network traffic monitoring tools as part of a network monitoring system might alert administrators to performance and security problems that can harm the network. Triggers are events that will generate alarms in the system. An event might refer to a deviation from mean value of a parameter, a crossed threshold parameter value, a change in the state of a node.
Threshold violations generate most alerts, but users can also set a network activity monitor to generate alerts based on time delays or repeat count of threshold violations. For example, a network monitoring and maintenance system can be configured not to generate an alert if a threshold is breached—until it is breached twice in 15 minutes. Similarly, an alert can be generated after an initial threshold violation returns to its baseline value or resets.
Certain threshold violations may be expected. Users may configure a network usage monitor to suppress these types of alerts. In other situations, the same sort of facts may cause multiple threshold violation alerts. Monitoring systems that support deduplication of alerts or consolidation of alerts can eliminate this problem.
How Do Secure Network Monitoring Tools Work?
Ping is a basic network monitoring tool that tests host availability and reachability in an IP network. Ping results data can determine whether a network host is active, or measure the packet loss and transmission time while communicating with a host.
Other common network performance monitoring tools monitor performance at the enterprise network level. Network monitoring systems deploy internet traffic monitoring tools such as mail server (POP3 server) monitoring and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) monitoring applications.
What is Network Performance Management?
Network performance management refers to the total body of techniques used to manage performance across a computer network. The network performance management process demands continuous monitoring of mission critical network performance management functions and metrics.
Application network performance management tools include network connectivity monitoring tools in particular, as well as traffic monitoring systems more generally.
What is Network Monitoring Software?
Some organizations use multiple network monitoring solutions including web traffic monitoring software to manage and monitor their network operations. This can sometimes mean that when there is a problem, it takes using several of these tools, including data, graphs, and reports, to uncover the real source of the problem.
Using integrated network management software allows some users to avoid this issue. This kind of network monitoring service offers cloud based network monitoring in real-time and provides more detailed insights into the issues that are slowing down the network. This in turn enables quicker fixes and less downtime.
The right network monitor software depends on your organization, so any package, whether it is a free version or a more premium offering, should offer targeted capabilities and scalability. Remote network monitoring solutions such as those that are software- or cloud-based offer the benefits of internal network monitoring without the need for a network monitoring server.
Availability Monitoring vs Interface Monitoring vs Server Monitoring
Availability monitoring simply refers to the totality of hardware, IT infrastructure, software, network monitoring tools, and other solutions an organization uses to ensure that its resources are available to meet its business needs. Monitoring and managing IP addresses and network connections constantly helps ensure high levels of network resource availability.
This is a continuous monitoring process that helps protect bandwidth availability, storage space, and application functionalities. Availability monitoring includes traffic monitoring and analysis, but it is not limited to that type of monitoring.
Any given network uses various kinds of interfaces, such as Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet, or very high-speed Fiber channel interfaces. Any interface is the entry and exit point on a device for packets—each of which provides a service.
Poor user experience can result from any packet loss, discards, errors, utilization limits, or of course downtime on the part of the interface. Interface monitoring and sometimes network speed monitoring watch for these kinds of issues and offer alerting and reporting options when there are problems.
Server monitoring is part of what network monitoring systems do as they gather interface statistics from network devices with SNMP or ping.
What is a Throughput Monitor?
Network throughput refers to how much data a given network transmits over a set time period. For instance, an Ethernet connection that transfers data at a rate of 40 Megabits per second has a 40 Mbps throughput.
Network throughput monitoring or throughput monitoring protects these high speed transmission rates. Application throughput monitoring focuses on the throughput speed of a specific application.
Does Avi offer a Real Time Network Monitoring Solution?
Avi is a smart, software-defined load balancer, but it does far more. Its features include multi-cloud traffic management, real time traffic monitoring, application performance monitoring (APM), security, predictive autoscaling, and container services.
Avi’s elastic load balancing solution can do many of the same things a dedicated APM tool does, including shrinking rollout times for applications and new services, minimizing delays. The platform also provides rapid incident resolution, allowing users to see system-wide views at-a-glance, monitor the health of applications, and map interactions visually.
Network Monitoring Definition
Network monitoring is a critical IT process to discover, map, and monitor computer networks and network components, including routers, switches, servers, firewalls, and more. It helps network administrators determine network performance and optimize network efficiency in real time.
Monitoring different types of networks and devices
Faulty networks and devices can hamper your network's performance. Early detection of network issues can help prevent network outages, downtime, and more. Organizations need to effectively monitor their network to help identify, locate, and resolve issues quickly.
A crucial part of the monitoring process is identifying and monitoring network-connected devices, their performance, and metrics. Devices such as routers, switches, and servers are involved in business-critical tasks and require regular and detailed monitoring. Network monitoring software can monitor network-connected devices, gather network performance metrics, speed up the troubleshooting process, and reduce downtime with multi-vendor network monitoring. It can also measure the health of the logical network, provide accurate metrics or information about each device in a network, simplifying the management of complex network devices.
Network functionality
It’s crucial to understand a network’s functionality. The job of a network is to exchange information between two systems, computers, and applications. The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model simplifies the information exchange over a network by breaking several functions a system relies on to send and receive data. Data transferred over a network passes through each component of OSI, using different network protocols. Network monitoring provides visibility into each layer of OSI, helping network administrators easily identify and troubleshoot network issues.
Common Network Devices to Monitor
Routers: Routers help connect networks via the internet.
Switches: Switches help connect devices such as servers, computers, printers, and more. Monitoring switches is critical to ensure network health and performance. It’s also essential to monitor traffic and hardware through the switch.
Firewalls: The role of a firewall is to protect the network by controlling incoming and outgoing traffic.
Servers: Server monitoring helps provide information about the network, data usage, and more.
Types of network monitoring metrics and protocols
To measure network performance, it’s important to understand and measure several network performance metrics. Using network performance monitoring tools, you can gain insights into metrics such as jitter, latency, packet loss, and more. These network performance metrics establish a baseline based on which you can accumulate results and improve the network's overall performance.
Latency: Latency can be defined as the round-trip time the data packets take to reach its destination across a network. The odd spikes represent major performance issues that may happen and go unnoticed.
Jitter: Jitter can be defined as the variation in delay or disruption when data packets travel across the organization's network. Real-time applications for video conferencing, faulty cables, and network congestion can cause jitter, affecting all the network traffic.
Packet loss: While monitoring the network, packet loss refers to the number of data packets lost while in transmission over a network. Measuring packet loss helps you determine the number of packets dropped to help ensure data security and network performance.
Throughput: Throughput is the amount of data passing through a network from one place to another in a given amount of time. It’s a crucial metric to measure network performance.
Packet Duplication: Packet duplication refers to the duplication of packets while they’re moving in a network. Packet duplication is identified when the same packet is sent twice at its destination from source.
Packet Reordering: Packet reordering is a network metric that determines the number of packets received in a wrong order. There can be several reasons for packet reordering, such as multi-path routing, and route fluttering.
Types of network protocols
Transmission Control Protocol: TCP is a standard communication protocol used to communicate over the network. It enables applications and communication devices to exchange information easily. It divides messages into a series of packets for easier transmission.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP): FTP is a standard communication protocol used to exchange files and documents from server to client via a computer network. Types of files can include text files, documents, program files, and more. This protocol is built on a client-server model architecture.
User Datagram Protocol (UDP): UDP is a communication protocol similar to TCP. It simplifies the way applications, services, and systems exchange information. It can be used as an alternative for TCP and can be used with IP as UDP/IP.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP): SNMP is a networking protocol used to monitor and manage network-connected devices and applications, majorly in IP networks. It allows administrators to manage networks with the help of the internet remotely.
Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP): SMTP is a set of communication guidelines or a protocol using which organizations can send electronic mail over their network via the internet.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): HTTP is a communication protocol designed to establish connections between servers by transferring a hypertext. HTTP protocol uses HTML tags to create links between servers.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): This protocol is designed to secure communications among servers or computers. It can also be used to transfer data from the client browser to a web server using HTTP text or image. The data transmitted is encrypted.
Internet Protocol (IP): IP protocol is designed to assign unique IP addresses. It’s commonly used with TCP. The unique IP addresses of data packets help them reach the correct destination via different nodes in a network.
Main benefits of network monitoring
Stay ahead of outages: Manual errors, configuration issues, and environmental factors can contribute to network issues. Implementing network monitoring can provide the visibility you need to stay ahead of potential problems. It enables you to track and monitor live network performance data in an easy-to-read interface.
Fix issues faster: Monitoring your network can help reduce the occurrence of outages. Whether it’s a configuration error or network traffic-related issues, it can help you quickly identify errors and performance outages through live network maps and performance metrics.
Reduce complexity: With technology innovation and the rise in connected devices, modern enterprises rely heavily on the internet for several business-critical tasks. Internet-dependent services may include ISPs, service providers, CDNs, SaaS, VPN, and more. Each of these services operates over the internet, making the network susceptible to performance fluctuations, routing issues, and so on. Having proper visibility into your network early on can help reduce the chances of errors.
Fault, performance, and availability monitoring
Fault management/monitoring: Fault monitoring involves identifying, diagnosing, and evaluating errors. The role of network fault management is to maintain high network connectivity and ensure all the applications and services are running at an optimum level. This helps minimize downtime and fault tolerance.
Network Performance Monitoring: Network performance monitoring is a set of processes used to determine how your network is performing and what problems are causing downtime. It lets you scan, discover, and map devices and applications to gain performance metrics such as latency, jitter, and throughput. This way, you can detect issues early on and improve your network health and performance.
Network Availability Monitoring: In a business landscape, where IT operations are mandatory round the clock, the high availability of networks and services is crucial. Any downtime related to systems, applications, or networks can impact businesses' bottom line and lead to a huge revenue loss. This is when network availability monitoring becomes critical. Network availability monitoring monitors and tracks port, system, application, service, and IP SLA availability to help ensure the network is free from downtime and potential outages.
Network monitoring tools features
Network monitoring tools offer five basic functions:
Discover: to find devices on your network
Map: to visualize your network
Monitor: to keep an eye on your network
Alert: to get notifications when devices go down
Report: to deliver on SLAs with real-time reporting
Monitoring solutions use standard protocols such as SNMP, IP, and TCP to poll network devices and servers and send updated real-time performance data. These solutions also provide multi-vendor network monitoring that scales and expands as your network grows. They offer network availability monitoring, critical path visualization, intelligent mapping features, performance analysis, and advanced alerting features.
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What Is Network Monitoring?
What Is Network Monitoring?
Network monitoring provides the information that network administrators need to determine, in real time, whether a network is running optimally. With tools such as networking monitoring software, administrators can proactively identify deficiencies, optimize efficiency, and more.
Network monitoring (1:35)
Cisco network management
Q&ABenefitsNetwork Monitoring ProtocolsResources
What are network monitoring systems?
Network monitoring systems include software and hardware tools that can track various aspects of a network and its operation, such as traffic, bandwidth utilization, and uptime. These systems can detect devices and other elements that comprise or touch the network, as well as provide status updates.
Network administrators rely on network monitoring systems to help them quickly detect device or connection failures or issues such as traffic bottlenecks that limit data flow. The ability to detect issues extends to parts of the network traditionally beyond their demarcation boundaries. These systems can alert administrators to issues by email or text and deliver reports using network analytics.
What are the protocols for network monitoring?
Protocols are sets of rules and directions for devices on a network to communicate with one another. Network hardware must use protocols in order to transmit data. Network monitoring systems use protocols to identify and report on network performance issues.
Key benefits of network monitoring
Clear visibility into the network
Through network monitoring, administrators can get a clear picture of all the connected devices in the network. See how data is moving among them, and quickly identify and correct issues that can undermine performance and lead to outages.
Increasing complexity
Modern enterprises rely on a host of internet-dependent, business-critical services. This includes cloud service providers, ISPs, CDNs, as well as SaaS, UCaaS, VPNs and SECaaS providers. Each service operates over the internet, making them susceptible to performance fluctuations caused by internet outages or routing issues. Visibility into the network components beyond your control allows you to monitor issues that might impact employees or customers.
Better use of IT resources
The hardware and software tools in network monitoring systems reduce manual work for IT teams. That means valuable IT staff have more time to devote to critical projects for the organization.
Early insight into future infrastructure needs
Network monitoring systems can provide reports on how network components have performed over a defined period. By analyzing these reports, network administrators can anticipate when the organization may need to consider upgrading or implementing new IT infrastructure.
The ability to identify security threats faster
Network monitoring helps organizations understand what "normal" performance looks like for their networks. So, when unusual activity occurs, such as an unexplained increase in network traffic levels, it's easier for administrators to identify the issue quickly--and to determine whether it may be a security threat.
Types of network monitoring protocols
SNMP
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application-layer protocol that uses a call-and-response system to check the status of many types of devices, from switches to printers. SNMP can be used to monitor system status and configuration.
ICMP
Network devices, such as routers and servers, use the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to send IP-operations information and to generate error messages in the event of device failures.
Cisco Discovery Protocol
The Cisco Discovery Protocol facilitates management of Cisco devices by discovering these devices, determining how they are configured, and allowing systems using different network-layer protocols to learn about one another.
ThousandEyes Synthetics
ThousandEyes Synthetics is an internet-aware synthetic monitoring solution for proactive detection of modern networked application performance issues.
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 monitoring can prevent network downtime or failures.
Important aspects of network monitoring:
Monitoring the essentials
Optimizing the monitoring interval
Selecting the right protocol
Setting thresholds
What is Network Monitoring? - ManageEngine OpManager
Monitoring the essentials.
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. The second step is determining the monitoring interval. 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.
Network Monitoring System - ManageEngine OpManager
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 have to be monitored 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.
Protocol and its types.
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 an SNMP 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.
Proactive monitoring and Thresholds.
Network downtime can cost a lot of money. In most cases, the end-user reports a network issue to the network management 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 application. 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.
Dashboards and customization.
Data becomes useful only when it is presented clearly to the right audience. It is important for IT administrators and users to know about critical metrics as soon as they log in. A network dashboard should provide an at-a-glance overview of the current status of your network, with critical metrics from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, services, application, URLs, printer, UPS and other infrastructure devices. Support for widgets to monitor the required specifics and real-time performance graphs can help administrators quickly troubleshoot problems and monitor devices remotely.
High Availability and Fail-over.
What happens when your trusted network monitoring tool is running on a server that crashes or loses network connection? You will want to be alerted on this and also have the situation automatically remedied using a back-up/stand-by of another twin real-time network monitor application installation. High availability refers to the continuous availability of a monitoring system. Every single network incident - device sickness, unhealthy bandwidth levels, DoS attacks etc., should be immediately brought to your notice so that counter-measures can be taken immediately.
Failover and fail-back functionality ensures an always-monitored network environment by utilizing a secondary standby server. If a failure occurs in the primary server, the secondary server is readily available to take over and the database is secure. This ensures a hundred percent network and device uptime.
Network Monitoring Definition - ManageEngine OpManager
Benefits of the Failover system:
Instantly recognize primary server failure.
Immediate notification via email in event of a primary server failure.
100% uptime and uninterrupted network management.
Automated, seamless switching between the Primary server to Standby server and vice versa.
Network monitoring solutions.
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 which 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, and remote network monitoring, a wide range of windows network monitor and Linux network monitor and network monitoring solutions are available in the market. An effective network management system will contain a built-in network monitor tool can help admins cut down on the workforce and automate basic troubleshooting techniques.
Features of an effective network monitor software:
Visualizing your entire IT infrastructure with further classifications based on type or logical groups.
Automatic configuration of devices and interfaces with predefined templates.
Monitor and troubleshoot network, server and application performance to ensure network optimization.
Implement advanced network performance monitoring techniques to quickly 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.
What is network monitoring?
Network monitoring, also frequently called network management, is the practice of consistently overseeing a computer network for any failures or deficiencies to ensure continued network performance. Technically, network monitoring can be viewed as a subset of network management, but the two are considered equivalent in practice.
Network monitoring collects and reports on a variety of data from a computer network, including routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers and even endpoints, like servers and workstations. The collected data is filtered and analyzed to identify a variety of network problems. These network problems can include the following:
device failures
link outages
interface errors
packet loss
application response time
configuration changes
The functions of a network monitoring and management system can be broken down into several categories, each of which performs a specific function.
Below is a reference network management architecture, developed by NetCraftsmen, that identifies the different data collection categories, how they share data and the protocols that are used.
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Network management and monitoring architecture
This reference architecture shows the elements of network monitoring and the supporting protocols.
Event collection and processing
Event collection relies on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps and syslog to collect network event data. Events enable the network to advise administrators of important events without having to poll network devices. Event processing is used to identify critical events, reducing the volume of alerts that network administrators must handle.
Network change and configuration management
Network change and configuration management (NCCM) archives network device configurations and can be used to automate configuration updates. Configurations may be retrieved and updated using any of several mechanisms, including the command-line interface (CLI), SNMP, RESTCONF and NETCONF.
Configuration analysis identifies day-to-day changes (drift) and audit compliance exceptions where configurations don't match network design policies. Both drift and audit are critical functions for ensuring that network configurations match the intended design and operation.
Performance monitoring
Performance monitoring collects device performance data, like central processing unit (CPU) and memory utilization, temperature, power supply voltages and fan operation. Interface performance data is used to identify failures, packet loss, congestion and other network problems.
Data is collected using SNMP, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the CLI or telemetry. Network devices and Linux-based endpoints typically rely on SNMP or telemetry for data collection, while Windows-based devices rely on the WMI remote protocol. WMI is a client-server framework that enables system management using the Common Information Model, which represents the components of the OS.
Telemetry
Newer devices and monitoring systems may employ network telemetry to push network performance data to a network monitoring system. Telemetry may use Extensible Markup Language- or JavaScript Object Notation-encoded data. Some network monitoring systems and related network devices use representational state transfer interfaces to collect data using these same data formats.
IP address management
IP address management tracks IP address use and controls the allocation of addresses to network devices. This function typically uses the CLI or an application programming interface (API) to other network management systems.
Topology mapping
The topology and mapping function collects device connection data to create physical and logical topology maps that form the foundation of basic troubleshooting. SNMP polling or the CLI are used to collect data on routing neighbors (Layer 3), switching neighbors (Layer 2), address translation tables (Layer 2 to Layer 3 mapping) and neighbor discovery protocols, like Link Layer Discovery Protocol.
Digital experience monitoring
Digital experience monitoring employs active testing tools, such as ping, traceroute and synthetic monitoring, to test that the network is working as intended. It may also employ software agents that run on endpoints, like servers and workstations, to collect data about application performance and network performance. Combining application performance monitoring with network monitoring enables IT organizations to diagnose whether an application problem is due to the network or some other factor, including external networks.
Security and automation
The architecture should include security and automation throughout. Security continues to be an important element of a smoothly running network, and automation is used to guarantee consistent implementation of network policies. The security design should include intrusion detection and intrusion prevention devices and the software to monitor and manage them. Automation may be provided by separate tools or integrated within an NCCM system.
Combining data from multiple sources enables a network monitoring system to identify failures quickly and to report on performance problems before they negatively affect applications that use the network.
How does network monitoring work?
Network monitoring collects massive amounts of data and analyzes the data to identify real or potential network problems that should be investigated. One way to reduce the data volume is to establish ranking of analysis rule exceptions using top N reports, e.g., top 10. Examples include the following from each of the architectural elements:
Events. The devices reporting the most events or the most frequently occurring events.
NCCM. The most important devices with configuration changes or the devices with the most configuration changes.
Performance. Highest utilization interfaces, interfaces with the most errors by count or by percentage packets or devices with the greatest CPU or memory utilization.
Address management. Subnets that are almost out of available addresses.
Topology. Devices with the most neighbor changes.
Digital experience monitoring. The systems reporting the slowest applications or the paths that are exhibiting the most problems.
Organizations frequently require a different tool for each architectural element. Consolidating the reports into one place provides a concise view of the network's operation. The reports must support links to the collected data to enable network administrators to perform detailed troubleshooting.
Benefits of network monitoring
The advantages of network monitoring include the following:
immediate notification of the failure of a network device or server;
rapid identification of security threats;
alerting network administrators to errors and performance problems within the network or within the applications, enabling them to address network issues more quickly;
tracking changes to network configurations and connectivity that could cause a network problem;
automated configuration of network devices;
identifying whether an application performance problem is due to the network or some other cause; and
visualizing the performance of the IT infrastructure.
A well-running network monitoring system enables the network administrators to address performance degradations proactively and react quickly to network failures. The expansion of networks to cloud implementations and software as a service (SaaS) has greatly expanded monitoring's scope and complexity.
Network monitoring software
Network monitoring software is available from a variety of sources, including open source and commercial. Open source tools often have a paid support version, frequently including premium features beyond those available in the free version. If a network uses devices from multiple vendors, then the network monitoring system needs to support those products. Vendor-supplied software rarely supports devices from other vendors.
Monitoring tools have adapted to the expansion of networks to cloud and SaaS. Network equipment vendors are frequently implementing controller-based architectures that incorporate many of the required monitoring and control functions. These controllers typically include APIs for integration with automation systems and other network monitoring and management tools.
Finding a single pane of glass manager is difficult. The variety of functionality that is needed for network management makes it challenging for a single product to do everything. The most successful approach matches a network monitoring tool with its corresponding functional category. For example, an event processing system has different requirements than a network performance monitoring system. Collecting useful summaries, like the top N reports, into a single dashboard often has the best results.
Organizations should also remember to include staffing requirements. Monitoring tools should be supported by at least two staff members who can keep it updated and be the experts on its operation.
When it comes to network monitoring and management costs, one rule of thumb is to keep it at 10% of the annual amortized cost of the network. These software packages require a lot of development effort, and organizations typically purchase one copy. Organizations shouldn't expect to monitor and manage a $1 million network using a $20,000 system. Alternatively, network administrators can calculate the cost of network downtime and factor that into the cost of the network monitoring systems.
Network monitoring examples
A good example system depends on the requirements, such as the event volume and the number of device interfaces to be monitored. Large networks have different requirements than a small organization's needs. Complex multi-cloud, SaaS, colocated data centers and on-premises data centers require more complex monitoring systems.
A network is a large, complex system in which many things need to work correctly for optimum network health and application performance. It should be monitored as an entire system, not a collection of devices. A word of caution: Organizations shouldn't skimp on thorough coverage. Monitoring a subset of active data center interfaces and key interfaces is a recipe for an undetected failure.
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What is Network Monitoring?
Network Monitoring is the process of discovering, mapping, and monitoring a computer network to ensure optimal availability and performance. The only way to know if everything on a network is operating efficiently is with a network monitoring tool like WhatsUp Gold.
This article covers basic network concepts like the OSI seven layer model, common device types, and the five functions of network monitoring systems.
Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Model
Understanding of basic networking begins with the Open Systems Interconnect model.
The OSI model standardizes the key functions of a network using networking protocols. This allows different devices types from different vendors to communicate with each other over a network.
In the OSI model, network communications are grouped into seven logical layers. Two devices communicate using OSI standardized protocols at each layer.
The OSI Seven Layer Model
Layer Function
Layer 7: Application Interacts with software applications that implement a communicating component.
Layer 6: Presentation Converts incoming and outgoing data from one presentation format to another (Data encryption, text compression).
Layer 5: Session Controls the connections between computers. Establishes, manages and terminates the connection.
Layer 4: Transport Ensures data transfer from a source to a destination host across one or more networks.
Layer 3: Network Routes data packets between two nodes on a network using an IP address
Layer 2: Data Link Provides a reliable connection between two connected nodes by detecting errors at the physical layer.
Layer 1: Physical Transmits a bit stream over physical media such as coax or fiber cable.
The Datalink (2), Network (3), and Application (7) layers are the most common used for monitoring. Network monitoring systems use these layers to discover the devices on the network and how they are connected, to generate network topology maps, and to monitor the network.
Common Network Devices
Routers
Routers connect networks. For example, connecting a private network to the internet. A router acts as a dispatcher, choosing the best path for the information to travel. Routers connect users to the internet. Routers are Layer 3 devices
Switches
Switches connect computers, printers, servers and other devices to the private network. A switch works as a controller enabling devices on the network to communicate with each other. Switches are Layer 2 devices
Firewalls
Firewalls protect networks. A firewall controls incoming and outgoing traffic based on rules. This creates a secure barrier between a trusted private network and an untrusted network, like the Internet.
Servers
Networks deliver applications and information to users. Applications and information live on servers. A server is a running instance, or copy of an application. Servers take requests from users and respond accordingly. For example, when you access a website, a web-server “serves” up webpages to your local device. Other examples of servers are email servers, and database servers.
How Data Passes Through a Network
Most private networks are connected to the internet. For example, the internet connects remote users to central offices. It connects customers to websites.
Private networks are connected to the internet using routers. Information is sent over the internet in the form of data packets. Each data packet includes a destination IP address which routers use to send information from one location to another. When a router receives a data packet from the internet, it forwards it to the private network.
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Diagram of data passing through a network (click to enlarge)
In most networks, data packets must first pass through a firewall. It’s purpose is to keep bad traffic out and keep the private network secure. A firewall does this by filtering traffic between the internet and private network. When an incoming data packet is flagged by firewall rules, it is blocked from the private network.
Firewalls also control user access between the internet and the private network. For instance, a firewall can be configured to prevent users on the private network from using specific protocols such as peer to peer. This is one way that Firewalls secure private networks from unauthorized access, malware and other security threats.
Data packets passed through the firewall are received by a switch on the private network. Switches connect laptops, servers, printers and other devices to the private network. These devices are connected to the switch using a Network Interface Card, or NIC for short. Each NIC has a unique Media Access Control, or MAC address. Switches transmit data between devices using these MAC addresses.
Why Monitor a Network?
So why is it important to monitor networks? The network is the life line of the IT infrastructure. When networks fail, the flow of information required by applications and business operations stop.
Networks are dynamic environments. Network Admins are continually asked to add new users, technologies and applications to their networks. These changes can impact their ability to deliver consistent, predictable network performance.
When network problems arise, Network Admins are pressured to identify the root cause before it impacts users, applications and the business. This is more problematic with intermittent performance problems which are hard to replicate and diagnose.
In order to ensure optimal network performance, most IT organizations are subject to Service Level Agreements, or SLAs.
What are SLAs and why are they important?
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between IT and Line of Business Owners that commits to providing a certain level of network performance and uptime. SLAs are a performance guarantee, are measured and reported on, and are often tied to IT compensation plans.
Why are SLAs important? Because poor performance and down time is costly. For an eCommerce website like Amazon, one hour of downtime can cost millions in lost revenue.
SLA requirements can be very strict. For example, A "four nines" SLA requires 99.99% uptime. This allows for less than one hour of downtime per year. The more demanding the SLA, the more costly it is to implement and maintain. For example, Delivering four or five nines requires network admins to configure their network switches in redundant pairs, AND have a third switch readily available to swap in case of failure.
The Five Functions of Network Monitoring Systems
We’ve talked about the basics of networking, now let’s talk about the basics of Network Monitoring Systems, or NMSs.
Network Monitoring Systems provide five basic functions:
Discover
Map
Monitor
Alert
Report
NMSs differ in the capabilities they delivery for each of these functions.
Discover: Find the Devices on Your Network
Network monitoring begins with the discovery process. Simply put, if you don’t know what’s on the network and how its all connected, you can’t monitor it. Network Monitoring Systems, like WhatsUp Gold, discover all of the devices on the network – the routers, switches, firewalls, servers, printers and more.
NMSs include a library of monitoring templates, which defines how to monitor a device. In WhatsUp Gold, we call these templates Device Roles. Device roles are type and vendor specific. For example, what you monitor on a Cisco Router will differ from what you monitor on a Dell Server.
When a network monitoring system completes the discovery process, it automatically assigns an appropriate device role to each discovered device.
discovered-devices-list-1024x665
List of discovered devices
Network Monitoring Systems differ in their discovery capabilities. All NMSs discover devices on the network. However, not all will discover how devices are connected to the network. For instance, a NMS may have identified a server on the network but it won't know what switch it is connected to.
A network monitoring tool, like WhatsUp Gold, with Layer 2/3 discovery will discover the port-to-port connectivity between devices on the network and automatically determine how they are connected. For effective network monitoring it’s not enough to know what’s on a network, you need to know how its all connected.
Why? Because a performance problem on one device can impact the performance of another. For example, when a switch fails, all devices connected to that switch can’t communicate over the network. This is a big problem if this is the switch connecting the servers supporting an organization's CRM system.
Map: Visualize Your Network
A network admins eyes are their most valuable diagnostic tool. Their ability to visualize their networks can saves hours, and even days troubleshooting network problems.
To help network admins visualize their networks, network monitoring systems generate network maps. Network maps provide a clean and orderly visual representation of the devices on a network, how they are connected, and up-to-date status information.
Many network mapping tools require a significant amount of manual processing to create a network map. Some tools merely provide a drawing tool and rely on the Network Admin’s knowledge to map out the network. Other tools, such as WhatsUp Gold, can automatically discover everything connected to your network and build a complete map of network devices and their port-to-port connectivity.
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A WhatsUp Gold Network Map
Device Dependencies
A network monitoring system should be able to automatically identify network dependencies. During the discovery and mapping process, tools like WhatsUp Gold automatically identify device dependencies, marking them on the map with directional arrows. Detecting downstream dependencies allows for easy alarm suppression, preventing alert storms.
What are alert storms? In larger networks, sysadmins will daisy-chain multiple switches otherwise known as “cascading”. A failed switch at the head of a chain (upstream) will generate hundreds of unnecessary alerts throughout the chain (downstream). We call this an alert storm. Alert storms can overwhelm an IT team and waste several hours of valuable time.
Custom Maps
Some NMSs allow users to customize network maps in hierarchical or spoke formats, or completely custom views. In WhatsUp Gold you can even upload an image of your office floorplan and visually map your network based on the layout of your office.
mapping network device dependencies
Mapping Device Dependencies
Monitor: Keep an Eye on Your Network
As we stated, Network Monitoring Software provides turn-key device roles that define what to monitor. Network admins can modify device roles or create new ones from scratch. NMSs expose network admins to a large selection of monitors.
As a starting point, network admins want to monitor the “big 5” for any device on the network. This includes Ping availability and latency, and CPU, memory, disk and interface utilization.
Most network monitoring tools provide monitors for other hardware components like the fans and power supplies in a switch, and even monitor the temperature in a wiring closet. They can also monitor network services like HTTP, TCP/IP and FTP
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Overview Dashboard
Alert: Get Notified When Devices Go Down
Network Monitoring Systems notify Network Admins when something goes wrong. They deliver alerts via email, text and logging.
Threshold based alerting enables network admins to respond to problems before they impact users, applications or the business. For example, the NMS is configured to issue an alert when the CPU utilization on a router exceeds 80%. This allows the network admin to proactively investigate and respond before the router fails altogether.
Performance metrics like CPU, memory and interface utilization fluctuate during the day. They may exceed thresholds for a few seconds or minutes during periods of peak usage. Network Admins don’t want to be bothered with these minor blips. To avoid this, NMS alerts are configured with a time elements. For instance, if CPU utilization exceeds 80% for more than 10 minutes, then issue an alert.
Believe it or not, Network Admins need to eat, sleep and spend time with their families. Some NMSs let Network Admins configure blackout periods, when alerts are suspended. For example, to save energy costs, printers to shut down at night. NMSs can be configured to suspend alerts from printers during the evening hours
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Alert Center Dashboard
Report: Deliver on SLAs with Real-time and Historical Reporting
Network admins are engaged in a continuous life cycle of designing, analyzing and redesigning the network.
To support this life cycle, NMSs systems provide real-time and historical monitoring data. This information enables Network admins:
To validate that network designs are delivering the desired results
To expose trends that could impact the ability of the network to deliver the performance demanded by users, applications and the business
To isolate and fix performance problems quickly
And to provide proof that SLA commitments are being met.
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WhatsUp Gold Ping Response Time Report
NMSs deliver monitoring information in webpages called dashboards. Dashboards are made up of turn-key views. For example, a top 10 CPU utilization view or a Top 10 Memory utilization view.
Network Admins scan summary dashboards to assess the health of the entire network. And then drill down with detailed dashboards of specific devices and monitors to quickly isolate performance problems
Most NMSs are customizable. Network admins can create dashboards for their internal clients – Their managers, line of business owners, Help Desk, and counterparts managing systems and applications
How Does a Network Monitoring Tool Monitor the Network?
Network Monitoring Systems poll network devices and servers for performance data using standard protocols such as:
SNMP, Simple Network Management Protocol
WMI, Windows Management Instrumentation
And SSH, Secure Shell for Unix and Linux server
Some NMSs support scripting languages like Powershell – to create custom monitors for Windows Servers, and SQL queries – to create custom monitors for databases.
The two most widely used monitoring protocols are SNMP and WMI. They provide Network Admins with thousands of monitors to assess the health of their networks and the devices on them.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
SNMP is standard protocol that collects data from almost any network attached device, including: Routers, Switches, Wireless LAN Controllers, wireless Access Points, Servers, Printers and more.
SNMP works by querying “Objects”. An object is something that an NMS collects information about. For instance, CPU utilization is an SNMP object. Querying on the CPU utilization object would return a value that an NMS uses for alerting and reporting.
The Objects queried by SNMP are maintained in a Management Information Base, or MIB. A MIB defines all the information that is exposed by the managed device. For example, the MIB for a Cisco router will contain all objects, defined by Cisco, that can be used to monitor that router such as CPU utilization, memory utilization and interface status.
The objects in a MIB are catalogued using an standardized numerating system. Each object has its own, unique Object Identifier, or OID.
Some NMSs provides a MIB Browser. A MIB Browser allows Network Admins navigate thru a MIB to find additional objects that they want to monitor on a device
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
WMI is the Microsoft implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management, a software industry initiative to develop a standard for accessing management information in the enterprise.
This protocol creates an operating system interface that receives information from devices running a WMI agent. WMI gathers details about the operating system, hardware or software data, the status and properties of remote or local systems, configuration and security information, and process and services information. It then passes all of these details along to the network management software, which monitors network health, performance, and availability.
Although WMI is a proprietary protocol for Windows-based systems and applications, it can work with SNMP and other protocols. However, Microsoft has deprecated WMI commands in Windows in favor of CIM cmdlets, so if you're using PowerShell to manage WMI you should be using those instead.
Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitoring is part of network management.[1]
Contents
1 Details
2 Network tomography
3 Route analytics
4 Various types of protocols
5 Internet server monitoring
5.1 Servers around the globe
5.2 Web server monitoring process
5.3 Notification
6 See also
7 Notes and references
8 External links
Details
While an intrusion detection system monitors a network threats from the outside, a network monitoring system monitors the network for problems caused by overloaded or crashed servers, network connections or other devices.
For example, to determine the status of a web server, monitoring software may periodically send an HTTP request to fetch a page. For email servers, a test message might be sent through SMTP and retrieved by IMAP or POP3.
Commonly measured metrics are response time, availability and uptime, although both consistency and reliability metrics are starting to gain popularity. The widespread addition of WAN optimization devices is having an adverse effect on most network monitoring tools, especially when it comes to measuring accurate end-to-end delay because they limit round-trip delay time visibility.[2]
Status request failures, such as when a connection cannot be established, it times-out, or the document or message cannot be retrieved, usually produce an action from the monitoring system. These actions vary; An alarm may be sent (via SMS, email, etc.) to the resident sysadmin, automatic failover systems may be activated to remove the troubled server from duty until it can be repaired, etc.
Monitoring the performance of a network uplink is also known as network traffic measurement.
Network tomography
Network tomography is an important area of network measurement, which deals with monitoring the health of various links in a network using end-to-end probes sent by agents located at vantage points in the network/Internet.
Route analytics
Route analytics is another important area of network measurement. It includes the methods, systems, algorithms and tools to monitor the routing posture of networks. Incorrect routing or routing issues cause undesirable performance degradation or downtime.
Various types of protocols
Site monitoring services can check HTTP pages, HTTPS, SNMP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS, SSH, TELNET, SSL, TCP, ICMP, SIP, UDP, Media Streaming and a range of other ports with a variety of check intervals ranging from every four hours to every one minute. Typically, most network monitoring services test your server anywhere between once per hour to once per minute.
For monitoring network performance, most tools use protocols like SNMP, NetFlow, Packet Sniffing, or WMI.
Internet server monitoring
See also: Website monitoring
Monitoring an internet server means that the server owner always knows if one or all of his services go down. Server monitoring may be internal, i.e. web server software checks its status and notifies the owner if some services go down, and external, i.e. some web server monitoring companies check the status of the services with a certain frequency. Server monitoring can encompass a check of system metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, network performance and disk space. It can also include application monitoring, such as checking the processes of programs such as Apache HTTP server, MySQL, Nginx, Postgres and others.
External monitoring is more reliable, as it keeps on working when the server completely goes down. Good server monitoring tools also have performance benchmarking, alerting capabilities and the ability to link certain thresholds with automated server jobs, such as provisioning more memory or performing a backup.
Servers around the globe
Network monitoring services usually have several servers around the globe - for example in America, Europe, Asia, Australia and other locations. By having multiple servers in different geographic locations, a monitoring service can determine if a Web server is available across different networks worldwide. The more the locations used, the more complete the picture of network availability.
Web server monitoring process
When monitoring a web server for potential problems, an external web monitoring service checks several parameters. First of all, it monitors for a proper HTTP return code. By HTTP specifications RFC 2616, any web server returns several HTTP codes. Analysis of the HTTP codes is the fastest way to determine the current status of the monitored web server. Third-party application performance monitoring tools provide additional web server monitoring, alerting and reporting capabilities.
Notification
As the information brought by web server monitoring services is in most cases urgent and may be of crucial importance, various notification methods may be used: e-mail, landline and cell phones, messengers, SMS, fax, pagers, etc.
See also
Network tap
Network traffic measurement
Business service management
Comparison of network monitoring systems
High availability
Network Monitoring Overview
Discover how network monitoring gives you visibility into the health of network devices, service communication, and the connections between all your other dependencies.
on this page
What is Network Monitoring?
How Does Network Monitoring Work?
Benefits of Network Monitoring
Primary Use Cases for Network Monitoring
Challenges of Network Monitoring
Network Monitoring Tools
further reading
What Is SNMP Monitoring?
next steps
What is SNMP Monitoring?
Network Performance Monitoring with Datadog
Network Device Monitoring with Datadog
Monitor SNMP with Datadog
What is Network Monitoring?
Network monitoring tracks the health of a network across its hardware and software layers. Engineers use network monitoring to prevent and troubleshoot network outages and failures. In this article, we’ll describe how network monitoring works, its primary use cases, the typical challenges related to effective network monitoring, and the main features to look for in a network monitoring tool.
Data that’s sent over a network passes through each layer of the OSI.
Data that’s sent over a network passes through each layer of the OSI.
How Does Network Monitoring Work?
Networks enable the transfer of information between two systems, including between two computers or applications. The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model breaks down several functions that computer systems rely on to send and receive data. In order for data to be sent across a network, it will pass through each component of the OSI, utilizing different protocols, beginning at the physical layer and ending at the application layer. Network monitoring provides visibility into the various components that make up a network, ensuring that engineers can troubleshoot network issues at any layer in which they occur.
Monitoring Network Hardware
Companies that run on-prem workloads or manage datacenters need to ensure that the physical hardware through which network traffic travels is healthy and operational. This typically comprises the physical, datalink, and network layers in the OSI model (layers 1, 2, and 3). In this device-centric approach to monitoring, companies monitor the components for transmitting data, such as cabling, and network devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls. A network device may have multiple interfaces that connect it with other devices, and network failures may occur at any interface.
How to Monitor Network Hardware
Most network devices come equipped with support for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) standard. Via SNMP, you can monitor inbound and outbound network traffic and other important network telemetry critical for ensuring the health and performance of on-premise equipment.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is a standard used on almost all networks to provide an address and routing system for devices. This protocol allows information to be routed to the correct destination over large networks, including the public internet.
Network engineers and administrators typically use network monitoring tools to collect the following types of metrics from network devices:
Uptime
The amount of time that a network device successfully sends and receives data.
CPU utilization
The extent to which a network device has used its computational capacity to process input, store data, and create output.
Bandwidth usage
The amount of data, in bytes, that is currently being sent or received by a specific network interface. Engineers track both the volume of traffic being sent, and the percentage of total bandwidth that is being utilized.
Throughput
The rate of traffic, in bytes per second, passing through an interface on a device during a specific time period. Engineers typically track throughput of a single interface, and the sum of the throughput of all interfaces on a single device.
Interface errors/discards
These are errors on the receiving device that cause a network interface to drop a data packet. Interface errors and discards can stem from configuration errors, bandwidth issues, or other reasons.
IP metrics
IP metrics, such as time delay and hop count, can measure the speed and efficiency of connections between devices.
Note that in cloud environments, companies purchase compute and network resources from cloud vendors who maintain the physical infrastructure that will run their services or applications. Cloud hosting therefore shifts the responsibility of managing the physical hardware onto the cloud vendor.
Monitoring Live Network Traffic
Above the hardware layers of the network, software layers of the network stack are also involved whenever data is sent over a network. This mainly involves the transport and application layers of the OSI model (layer 4 and layer 7). Monitoring these layers helps teams track the health of services, applications, and underlying network dependencies as they communicate over a network. The following network protocols are especially important to monitor because they are the foundation for most network communication:
Application Layer (Layer 7)
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
The protocol used by clients (typically web browsers) to communicate with web servers. Primary HTTP metrics include request volume, errors, and latency. HTTPS is a more secure, encrypted version of HTTP.
Domain Name System (DNS) The protocol that translates computer names (such as “server1.example.com”) to IP addresses through the use of various name servers. DNS metrics include request volume, errors, response time, and timeouts.
Transport Layer (Layer 4)
Internet Protocol (IP) - Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
A protocol that sequences packets in the correct order and delivers packets to the destination IP address. TCP metrics to monitor may include packets delivered, transmission rate, latency, retransmits, and jitter.
User Datagram Protocol (UDP) UDP is another protocol for transporting data. It offers faster transmission speeds, but without advanced features such as guaranteed delivery or packet sequencing.
How to Monitor Live Network Traffic
Network monitoring applications may rely on a variety of methods to monitor these communication protocols, including newer technologies such as extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF). With minimal overhead, eBPF tracks packets of network data as they flow between dependencies in your environment, and translates the data into a human-readable format.
Network Monitoring vs. Network Management
Network monitoring tracks the health of a network across its hardware and software layers. Engineers use network monitoring to prevent and troubleshoot network outages and failures. In this article, we’ll describe how network monitoring works, its primary use cases, the typical challenges related to effective network monitoring, and the main features to look for in a network monitoring tool.
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Benefits of Network Monitoring
Network failures can cause major business disruptions, and in complex, distributed networks, it’s critical to have complete visibility in order to understand and resolve issues. For instance, a connectivity issue in just one region or availability zone can have a far reaching impact across an entire service if cross-regional queries are dropped.
One common benefit of monitoring network devices is that it helps prevent or minimize business-impacting outages. Network monitoring tools can periodically gather information from devices to ensure that they are available and performing as expected, and can alert you if they are not. If an issue does arise on a device, such as high saturation on a specific interface, network engineers can act quickly to prevent an outage or any user-facing impact. For example, teams can implement load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple servers if monitoring reveals that one host is not enough to serve the volume of requests.
Another benefit of network monitoring is that it can help companies improve application performance. For example, network packet loss can manifest as user-facing application latency. With network monitoring, engineers can identify exactly where packet loss is occurring and remedy the problem. Monitoring network data also helps companies reduce network-related traffic costs by surfacing inefficient cross-regional traffic patterns. Finally, engineers can also use network monitoring to check if their applications can reach DNS servers, without which websites won’t load correctly for users.
Modern monitoring tools can unify network data with infrastructure metrics, application metrics, and other metrics, giving all engineers in an organization access to the same information when diagnosing and troubleshooting issues. This ability to consolidate monitoring data lets teams easily determine whether latency or errors stem from the network, code, a host-level issue, or another source.
Primary Use Cases for Network Monitoring
Some specific use cases for network monitoring include the following:
Datacenter Monitoring
Network engineers can use network monitoring to collect real-time data from their datacenters and set up alerts when a problem appears, such as a device failure, temperature spike, power outage, or network capacity issue.
Cloud Network Monitoring
Companies that host services on cloud networks can use a network monitoring tool to ensure that application dependencies are communicating well with each other. Engineers can also use network monitoring to help understand cloud network costs, by analyzing how much traffic is passing between regions or how much traffic is handled by different cloud providers.
Network Monitoring for Containerized Applications
Containers allow teams to package and deliver applications across multiple operating systems. Often, engineers use container orchestration systems such as Kubernetes to build scalable distributed applications. Whether their containerized applications run on-prem or in the cloud, teams can use network monitoring to ensure that the different components of the app are communicating properly with each other.
Companies that embrace a hybrid approach in hosting their services may use network monitoring in each of these ways. In a hybrid approach, some workloads depend on internally managed datacenters, while others are outsourced to the cloud. In this case, a network monitoring tool can be used to get a unified view of on-premise and cloud network metrics, as well as the health of data flowing between both environments. It’s common to use a hybrid approach when an organization is in the process of migrating to the cloud.
Teams use network monitoring to collect data from on-premise and cloud resources.
Teams use network monitoring to collect data from on-premise and cloud resources.
Challenges of Network Monitoring
Modern networks are incredibly large and complex, transmitting millions of packets each second. In order to troubleshoot issues on a network, engineers traditionally use flow logs to investigate traffic between two IP addresses, manually log in to servers via Secure Shell Access (SSH), or remotely access network equipment to run diagnostics. None of these processes work well at scale, provide limited network health heuristics, and lack contextual data from applications and infrastructure that may shed light on the root cause of potential network issues.
Engineers also face challenges in network monitoring when companies move to the cloud. Network complexity increases because cloud workloads and their underlying infrastructure are dynamic and ephemeral in nature. Short-lived cloud instances may appear and disappear based on changes in user demand. As these cloud instances spin up and down, their IP addresses also change, making it difficult to track network connections using only IP-to-IP connection data. Many monitoring tools don’t allow you to monitor network connections between meaningful entities like services or pods. In addition, because the cloud provider provisions the network infrastructure, network issues are often out of the client’s control, forcing workloads to be moved to a different availability zone or region to avoid issues until they are fixed.
Network Monitoring Tools
Software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based solutions, such as Datadog, break down silos between engineering teams and bring a holistic approach to network monitoring. Datadog’s network monitoring products unify network data with infrastructure, application, and user experience data in a single pane of glass.
Network Device Monitoring (NDM) autodiscovers devices from a wide range of vendors and lets you drill down to monitor the health of individual devices. You can even proactively monitor device health with anomaly detection monitors for bandwidth utilization and other metrics.
Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) provides visibility into the rest of your network stack and analyzes traffic in real time as it flows across your environment. Teams can monitor communication between services, hosts, Kubernetes pods, and any other meaningful endpoints—not just IP connection data. And by tying network metrics together with other metrics and telemetry data, teams have rich context to identify and resolve any performance issue anywhere in their stack.
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What is network monitoring
Network monitoring is a tool used to identify and send out alerts regarding issues affecting the availability or functionality of network services. Administrators typically monitor availability of network services, functionality of network interfaces, status of critical hardware systems, CPU, memory, or other statistics for servers and devices on a network.
In other words, administrators use network monitoring tools to ensure critical systems in the network are available and functioning properly.
Consistent network monitoring and analysis is important for:
Understanding a network’s baseline statistics — helps administrators notice and respond to abnormal behavior.
Governing networks — prevents unwanted or unauthorized changes, including misconfigurations, shadow IT, and possible security threats by insiders or outside attackers.
Identifying critical issues — which can cause network slowdown or failure, before they result in a problem.
When a problem already occurs — helps to identify the root cause and resolve it.
What does network monitoring cover
Network monitor tools cover some or all of the following network elements:
Network devices — including routers, switches, appliances, gateways and proxies
Links and connections between network elements, including network interfaces
Mission critical servers — web server monitoring, email servers, application servers, FTP servers, storage systems
External service providers — including web hosting, cloud services, SaaS applications, messaging services
For servers or other devices on the network, network monitoring typically watches availability, CPU and memory utilization, disk usage, and configuration.
A network monitor works with protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, SNMP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS, SSH, TELNET, SSL, TCP, ICMP, SIP, UDP, and Media Streaming. Network monitoring solutions can perform passive monitoring such as listening on ports and reporting on traffic. Some solutions also perform active monitoring, for example, sending a ping or performing a TCP request to test how a server or network service responds.
Metrics and measurements used by network monitoring tools
Network monitoring tools measure the following aspects of network services or devices:
Availability — is the service or device up and responding to requests?
Network response time — how fast is each request processed?
Network route analytics — what network routes do requests travel through, which hops exist between client and server, and are routes optimal?
Network traffic monitoring methods and tools
A basic utility used in network monitoring is ping. Ping is used to check if a computer is operating and if network connections are intact. Ping works by sending an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) request over the network, and measuring round-trip time (RTT) for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer and back.
Another way to monitor networks is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP provides a reliable way for network devices to share information with each other. It creates a data tree with Management Information Bases (MIBs), which group together specific types of devices or device components. Each device or component has an Object Identifier (OID), which allows network tools to query the object and obtain operational data.
There is a large variety of network tools—free, open source and commercial—which leverage SNMP and other monitoring techniques. Tools can help network administrators monitor traffic, view charts and visualizations of traffic and device status, define thresholds for anomalies in networks and receive alerts, and diagnose complex network problems.
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Imperva network traffic monitoringNetwork Monitoring with Imperva
Imperva offers a network health monitoring solution, as part of its Load Balancer as a Service, which provides:
Passive/active network health monitoring — web traffic is monitored to ensure servers are functioning, and HTTP requests are sent periodically to offline servers to check when traffic resumes.
Automatic alerts — email notifications are sent when your services fails. Notifications can be triggered by a server going down, a traffic rerouting event, or a data center crash.
Automatic load balancing and failover — Imperva’s load balancer as a service provides live view of traffic loads for each server in your local and remote data centers, allowing for automatic distribution and agile manual rerouting. On top of it, the service monitors server health, detects outages and instantly directing traffic to a backup server.
