Network Performance Monitoring

Network management strategies have changed today significantly from earlier times. Today, it is mission-critical for companies to monitor the performance of their computer network. This is where good network performance monitoring will come in handy.

In this article, we will endeavor to inform you some aspects about network performance monitoring.

Network performance monitoring comprises monitoring the performance of various network applications, devices, servers, other hardware, and network services.

Network performance monitoring is absolutely essential for a networked company's business today.

Simply consider the case of a bank that hosts its entire operations on a server. All branches of the bank worldwide depend on their entire operations on broadband Internet connectivity through a dedicated or leased line connected to the server.

Whenever this Internet connectivity link fails temporarily, all operations at all branches of the bank come to a standstill. This results in loss of the bank's entire business in all branches during the period of failure of the Internet connectivity.

This loss of business can be minimized by implementation of network performance monitoring.

The monitoring can be optimally implemented by continuously collecting passive data related to all components of a computer network and maintaining such historical data for analysis for a period of at least one year.

These components include web servers, database servers, application servers, and e-mail servers. They also include various network devices such as wireless access points, routers, modems, firewalls, and switches, as also network cables. They also include various network services and applications such as port scanners, firewall applications, anti-virus applications, anti-spyware, and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) applications.

The Internet broadband connectivity line also is one of the most important components of a company's network.

Network performance monitoring entails proactive performance management of network traffic and applications. It can then use this vital data for effective strategic planning and also to troubleshoot a network for performance issues. A Web-based performance measurement and management console can be very useful to implement this into action.

The console can collect real-time data about network usage.. It will help in the construction of reports that include raw information on a wide range of performance metrics. Such real-time gathering should capture baseline trends that will be used for comparison of network performance. It can also be utilized for troubleshooting purposes.

Network performance monitoring should be able to measure end-to-end response time, device performance data, and traffic flow. It should be able to customize the reports according to the user's requirements.

The most important characteristic of this is that it should be focused on an application performance approach rather than a device-centric approach.

Through this article, you may have got an insight into some important aspects that pertain to network performance monitoring. For more information, you can search on the Internet.