Importance of Network Monitoring | Top 8 Benefits

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the importance of network monitoring is growing by leaps and bounds. With real-time network monitoring, businesses can transform their user experiences and drive unstoppable growth. Whether you run a small business or a large corporation, incorporating network monitoring tools can help in the smooth functioning of your networks.

Join us as we unveil the top benefits of network monitoring in the modern business landscape. Further, we will discuss its types and common network issues that can disrupt your performance. Stay with us to learn more about network monitoring tools and unlock their real power.

What is Network Monitoring?

Network monitoring is a constant practice that most network administrators perform to identify connection failures and other network issues. With proper analysis, Network and System Administrators can deliver better network quality. The monitoring process involves:

• Stats collection
• Analyzing trends in network traffic
• Optimization of network settings
• Detection of issues and threats in real time

The Role of Network Monitoring in Business Operations

Let us say a user comes across your portal and visits the page to purchase a product. However, due to some error in the network device or connection failure, he failed to access your page or application. As a result, he will move to another platform or application. Similarly, you might lose other customers as well resulting in a good amount of revenue loss. It is not just e-commerce businesses that might face the issue, businesses of all types can face downtime.

In simple terms, network issues or connection failures can slow down your daily operations. However, with the help of network monitoring tools, keeping a check on the performance of network hardware and software devices becomes an easy task. You can identify the problem in real time and troubleshoot the issues to reduce downtime. Network monitoring is highly recommended for businesses of all sizes as it helps identify potential issues beforehand and can save from bigger losses.

Why Network Monitoring is Important for Enterprises and Small Businesses?

An enterprise uses different network components to perform day-to-day operations. Faults in the network can frustrate a user, but at the same time, they can increase expenses for your business. The best solution in that case is to add a network monitoring solution to your list. This decision will help you gain valuable insights and troubleshoot network issues faster.

Here are a few more reasons to convince you how network monitoring solutions can benefit your enterprise:

Prevents Network Outages from Happening in the First Place

One of the biggest nightmares of an IT manager or network administrator is a network outage. However, with an appropriate monitoring solution, you can put a halt to these outages before they start. The monitoring tool will look for any suspicious performance behavior and notify you of the issue before it affects your overall performance.

Discover Security Threats

Apart from tracking the health and performance of networks, networking monitoring tools even help in dealing with security threats. On detecting any abnormal data transfers or malware within your system, it instantly sends an alert. A few monitoring solutions include network detection and response (NDR) features that aid in detecting harmful actors on a network and removing them.

Reduce Performance Failure Time

At times even after discovering the issue, fixing it can take a long time. However, with monitoring tools, the team immediately receives a notification and proper actions take place to reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR) of network performance issues.

Types of Network Monitoring and Their Uses

There are three types of network monitoring tools, and each comes with their functions, benefits, and limitations.

1. SNMP-based Tools

SNMP-based Network Monitoring tools keep track of network devices using the SNMP protocol. It has an SNMP agent that helps network admins to constantly manage and track the status of each network device and its resource consumption. As and when a network node experiences resource overload or becomes unavailable, SNMP tools send an instant alert. Regardless of the hardware or software type, SNMP enables communication between numerous network devices.

A few SNMP commands used by the tool are:

• Snmpget
• Snmpwalk
• Snmpset
• snmptrap

2. Passive Monitoring Tools

To keep an eye on the real user data, i.e., the traffic flow, we recommend using a passive network monitoring tool. The tool creates aggregate traffic statistics and segments them into different sections depending on hosts and protocols. Thus, making it easier for network and system administrators to discover machines responsible for using up a particular network capacity. You can also run scans on a particular series of packets to identify the issue between a client and a server.

3. Active Monitoring Tools

Real packets are introduced into the network using Active Monitoring Tools that assist in bandwidth monitoring, measuring end end-to-end reachability, and tracking link usage, and& other network properties. It can be further used to run tests from the user’s point of view by carrying out actual transactions and analyzing performance. Using the active monitoring tool, users can identify and report feedback and concerns regarding performance deterioration faster and more accurately.

What Information is Analyzed by Network Monitoring?

With Network Monitoring, IT Managers and Network administrators can analyze a large volume of data, the performance of a network, and overall health.

Here are a few areas that you can analyze through network monitoring tools:

• Network Traffic - Number of packets, Protocol types, and size of data transfers.
• Bandwidth Utilization - Measures bandwidth usage and discover periods of network congestion
• Latency - Identifies the reason behind the delay in moving data packets from the source to the destination
• Packet Loss - Allows admins to track and analyze packet loss
• Device Status - Monitors the overall status of routers, servers, switches, and other network devices.
• Resource Utilization - Monitors CPU, Memory, and Storage Usage and prevents resource exhaustion
• Traffic Patterns - Monitors traffic patterns and data flows

Key Benefits of Network Monitoring

One cannot ignore the importance of network monitoring in today’s time as it brings a plethora of benefits to an organization. Network Monitoring can help address issues proactively, improve your security, and aid in efficient resource utilization. Let us discuss a few more key benefits of network monitoring solutions.

1. Proactive Issue Detection

One of the major benefits of using network monitoring tools is, you can discover problems and their root cause quickly in a network. Quick identification will result in quick remediation of network problems. Users can quickly identify performance changes that can be problematic in future with constant monitoring of the networks.

2. Improved Network Performance

Businesses expand over the period and new devices are added to a network as per the requirement. To keep up the performance, increasing bandwidth is essential. Implementing Network Performance Optimization strategies ensures efficient network operation amid expansion. With network monitoring, you can keep a watch on all these changes and new devices. Network monitoring is a tool you may use to boost network performance and ultimately outperform your competition.

3. Enhanced Security

Attackers always look for opportunities to make a way into the network and steal data. But, you can put a halt to the attacker’s attempt by using a network monitoring tool. These tools spot anomalies and send alerts to admins before they cause any negative impact. It even identifies and reports about unfamiliar devices in the network. Overall, it enhances your security system and delivers protection from attackers.

4. Resource Optimization

Manually checking resource usage across the network can be quite challenging, especially if you have a complex network system. However, with the help of the monitoring tool, the task of identifying underutilized or overutilized resources becomes simple. With the key insights on resource consumption, admins can allocate resources more efficiently.

5. Cost Savings

Another benefit of relying on monitoring tools is, it helps in cutting your network expenses. Removing unused hardware, optimizing network traffic, and implementing trending network monitoring technologies will assist in managing costs. Businesses can save money on emergency costs by fixing problems before they arise.

6. Compliance and Reporting

For businesses, it is essential to adhere to relevant regulatory compliance. For example, if you run a hospital, you must adhere to HIPAA compliance. Similarly, other compliance standards for different industries and businesses must be met, i.e., PCI DSS, GDPR, etc. Businesses with complex networks find it challenging to adhere to security compliance. However, you can make it happen and meet SLA requirements with the use of a network monitoring solution.

7. User Satisfaction

Keeping proper track of networks and their performance, businesses can eventually improve the user experience. With proper monitoring, businesses can make sure that all employees and clients are availing uninterrupted access to the resources.

8. Troubleshooting Efficiency

The tools help enhance the effectiveness of troubleshooting by giving real-time insights into how the network is performing and identifying the underlying cause of an issue. It further helps businesses in better decision-making and boosting productivity.

Common Network Issues and Their Impact on Business Operations

Here are some of the common network issues that can be found in an organization:

Slow Internet – Even though there are several broadband packages available online, the problem of slow network connection exists. It can happen due to various factors, such as the downloading of large files, installation of new applications, and increase in employee count using the same network. Slow network connections can freeze your systems and halt your business operations.

WiFi Blackspots - Locations where you have unstable connections or weak WiFi signals are known as WiFi Blackspots. These generally occur when a router is installed at a distant location from a device. At times, it can be really frustrating for the employees as they are unable to perform daily tasks due to interference or instability.

Bandwidth Usage –Another common issue that results in poor business operations is restricted bandwidth availability. It is good to know that more devices can connect to a network with a high bandwidth. But in offices, employees constantly use the network to perform daily operations, as a result, if more and more data is downloaded, chances are high that the faster your bandwidth will reach its limit.

Factors to Consider When Selecting a Network Monitoring Tool

1. Ease of Implementation

No matter how helpful a network monitoring tool is, it won’t accomplish the desired goal if it’s difficult to deploy. When looking for a network monitoring tool, make sure to check if it is easy to implement and customize. Can your team deploy agents and manage different components constantly without any hassle.

2. Security

A network monitoring solution must have the ability to perform regular checks and identify tampered files. Further, it must guarantee the validity of external files that are derived from external sources and product files that are linked to the tool.

3. Scalability

Most businesses expand their network with the rise in the business. In that case, having network monitors that can scale to different network infrastructures is the best solution for effective network monitoring.