Network Monitoring Definition and Solutions
Network monitoring is far more strategic than its name implies. It involves watching for problems 24/7, but it's also about optimizing data flow and access in a complex and changing environment. Tools and services are as numerous and varied as the environments they guard and analyze.
- What is network monitoring?
- How important is network monitoring?
- What can network monitoring systems monitor?
- What kind of networks can they monitor?
- What strategic tasks can network monitoring systems do?
- What questions can network monitoring answer?
- What can network monitoring do for me?
- What tools will I find in network monitoring systems?
- What kinds of network monitoring systems are available?
- What do they cost?
What strategic tasks can network monitoring systems do?
A network monitoring system (NMS) will help make sense of these complex environments, issuing reports that managers use to:
• Confirm regulatory and policy compliance
• Highlight potential cost savings by finding redundant resources, for example
• Solve efficiency-sapping mysteries like dropped mail sessions
• Help determine employee productivity
• Spot overloaded equipment before it can bring down a network
• Identify weak wide-area-network links and other bottlenecks
• Measure latency, or the delayed transfer of data
• Find anomalous internal traffic that might be indicate a security threat
But an NMS isn't an intrusion detection system (IDS) or intrusion prevention system (IPS). Those critical systems detect break-ins and prevent unauthorized activity. An NMS can detect troublesome actions, but that is not its mission.
It's also not a "set it and forget it" solution.
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