If you have been following our writeups (which I hope you do and regularly!), you would realize that lately, we have been talking a lot about network monitoring and its various aspects. The reason being that it is of paramount importance. Without a competent performance monitoring tool, the entire system becomes a cesspool of undetected problems which in turn hurts the entire network from performing to its fullest.
Continuing that trend, today we shall focus on why the traditional form of network monitoring is not cutting out to be impeccable anymore.
What we must understand is the fact that though the traditional monitoring tools are not that effective in today’s situation, however, they are critical for the groundwork of development and refinement of the modern network performance monitoring tools.
Key Features of Network Monitoring
Why We Need A Versatile Network Monitoring?
It is quite evident that most traditional forms of network performance monitoring tools have originated from conventional and much simple forms of networks. They have become much complex over the years. With the sheer increase in the size and complexity of the networks, the traditional network monitoring strategies and equipment have to be revisited to keep them relevant and up to the mark. There are quite a few challenges that the team might end up facing. One of the most glaring challenges currently is monitoring the eco-system spread across multiple premises and the Cloud.
The ever-evolving network performance monitoring tools are becoming more sophisticated by the day. These tools have become so advanced and intricate that now they have the skill to determine the different types of data flow and treat them accordingly on the network itself. To achieve this complex goal, a variety of QoS and applications are deployed.
How does a traditional monitoring tool collect data?
- Active Probing
- SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Application
- IPFIX (Internet Protocol Flow Information Export) Application
- Packet Captures
- Log Analysis
It is obvious that whatever worked when the applications and servers were restricted to a premise, is definitely not good enough for the cloud environment. End-to-end visibility and real-time performance reports across the environment are imperative for a successful monitoring strategy. The networking team should have a clear insight inside all the applications that are run daily like video conferencing tools, Microsoft Office etc. If this does not happen then any chance of fixing the issue proactively becomes nullified. Also, the engineers must understand thoroughly what exactly are the needs of the network. The level of granularity vs complexity of the tool will depend on that need.
Abilities of the Modern Network Performance Monitoring Tools
Network and application monitoring
We are aware that modern network monitoring tools have been majorly based on the SNMP protocol and ICMP ping. For the set network devices, it would mean that the tool will monitor and diagnose the hardware health including power supplies and memory usage amongst others.
Network problem Analysis
Modern monitoring tools have the ability to conduct complex and advanced network troubleshooting like routine protocol monitoring and sending alerts unscheduled protocol changes appear. Some such products possess the intelligence to take automated actions to resolve such issues.
Data Flow Capture Analysis
This is one of the primary duties of the modern monitoring tool. Many enterprise organizations insist on the tool’s ability to audit the packets to analyze at the most granular level. Network engineers employ deep packet inspection to identify application related problems that might just go unnoticed otherwise.
Problem detection
Be it at the server OS level, or at the virtualization level or even at the middleware level, issues/problems can and will arise within the networks and applications. Modern performance monitoring tools use various methods to monitor and detect these types of problems.
Root Cause Analysis
The ability to collect and understand different performance reports of the network and come up with an automated root cause analysis is one of the trickiest tasks of the modern network monitoring tool. A complex function to configure, it requires all the devices and the monitoring systems to be synced perfectly. However, once set and maintained, the root-cause analysis saves a huge amount of time while troubleshooting.
What today’s network requires is a comprehensive monitoring platform which is cost-effective, reduces Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and can proactively integrate and analyze data which is collected from network, applications, and infrastructure across vast and intricate environments.
If you are looking to refresh/replace your current solutions, or simply want more information before you make up your mind, get in touch with us here to know how our SD-WAN solutions can help you with your network monitoring.
