Your network is the backbone of your business – how much sleep do you lose because you are worried about cyberattacks? How much revenue would you lose if your entire network went down? Preventing failure isn’t easy, but having network monitoring software and tools in place can help you rest easier. As a NEPA area provider, we want to help our Reading and Williamsport area clients enjoy a more relaxed working life.
In today’s high-speed age, your network must be available and prepared to support financial transactions, communications, and incredibly powerful tools and programs. To help you keep your business operations running without fail, you can read on to learn more about the four types of network monitoring tools that will keep you from losing out on revenue, man-hours, and sleep.
What are the Four Types of Network Monitoring?
Network monitoring sounds like something that should be simple, but remember that your network hardware infrastructure covers the entirety of your business’ divisions – Finance, production, security, and more. This is why 4 different types of networking monitoring tools exist:
- Performance Monitoring
- Availability Monitoring
- Traffic Monitoring
- Security Monitoring
And these tools and categories may also apply to cloud services if needed. Each type of tool will focus on its domain, providing sharpened and focused benefits to the division of business disruptions that it targets. But what do these tools actually do?
Performance Monitoring Tools
Network performance monitoring tools are designed to provide admins with a full view of your network to identify and solve network issues well before they show up for users. These tools analyze and form metrics around bandwidth utilization, packet loss, latency, and response times. Each of these provides valuable insights into network health.
There are dozens of ways that a network performance monitoring tool can examine network components in your systems, but this can look like:
- Monitoring the speed and consistency of uploads and downloads
- Tracking network traffic patterns to identify high-traffic times
- Evaluating applications for response times and performance
- Evaluate the connection speed of a specific network device
- Provide real-time updates to related performance metrics
These are just a few ways a network administrator might use these tools to see network performance issues and act. From applying updates to finding new solutions, your network administrators can react before your team notices issues. This type of tool is about keeping network usage consistent – but there is another type of network management tool for keeping you online.
Availability Monitoring Tools
Have you ever struggled with malfunctioning routers that impede your access to your network? Availability monitoring, or ‘fault monitoring’ is a type of tool that shows the availability of network resources and infrastructure. These tools constantly monitor your network to ensure that everything is online and active by:
- Using internet control message protocol (ICMP) pings, which are essentially calling out “Marco?/Polo!” to ensure consistent responses
- Use simple network management protocol (SNMP) traps on SNMP enabled devices, which activate on device failure and alert your admin about status changes.
- Network mapping to ensure you know all connected network devices are available for use
Dozens of alerting tools and messaging protocols can be used to provide immediate knowledge of your network and monitored devices’ availability – but what if these communications aren’t occurring fast enough?
Traffic and Bandwidth Monitoring Tools
You know how frustrating it can be when your network slows down and leaves you waiting for websites and applications to load. Troubleshooting these network slowdowns can be difficult because traffic will shift throughout the day. The data flow across all the devices in your network can change dramatically as people go through their day-to-day work, and having real-time performance graphs will provide you with keen insights into resource consumption and network operations.
Bandwidth monitoring tools can provide your network administrators with an effective network monitoring tool that shows slow networks’ high-priority bottlenecks and pain points. This data analysis doesn’t just provide you with improved network processes. Still, it can also support the activities of your security monitoring tools by ensuring you have more efficient tracking of connected devices.
Security Monitoring Tools
Network security monitoring tools are essential for businesses of all kinds. You might not think your information or business makes you a target, but cyber-criminals will take any opportunity they can get. Security monitoring tools are among the most important for your business’s safety and can be used to:
- Collect data, store it, and analyze information from devices that visit your network to look for unauthorized users
- Monitor traffic for unusual or malicious activities in real-time
- Device monitoring tools can check for unwanted changes to configurations such as the firewall, which can expose you to danger.
There are countless tools and methods to monitor your entire network infrastructure and devices for security threats and cybersecurity weaknesses. This is invaluable to network admins for the long-term health of your business and network infrastructure.
Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Tools
Cloud network monitoring systems and tools are not their category of network monitoring software, but the cloud is a massive portion of work and infrastructure today. It is worth mentioning and pointing out that the above tools and systems can work for your cloud systems just as well as your on-site networks.
Secure, Maintain, and Protect with Network Monitoring Solutions from Innotek
Don’t be overwhelmed by your IT infrastructure; enjoy complete network visibility with these monitoring tools. These four categories of network monitoring software can provide a comprehensive network monitoring solution that will enhance network security, provide performance metrics, and prevent network failures.
You can’t risk the loss of revenue caused by data breaches and network problems. You need a business that runs consistently and efficiently. We are a managed services provider in NE Pennsylvania, and we can help you take full control of your business and help you find the right monitoring solution for your needs. Call today and start the conversation if you are in the Bloomsburg or Scranton area,!