Networks are sophisticated animals and, with every passing day, they add to ever-increasing complexity. One amongst the many challenges faced by network admins is maintaining and managing the performance of the networks being used. It’s an important function to keep things running smoothly. As per Gartner’s latest report “NPM tools provide users with visibility & important diagnostics to make sure that the enterprise networks are capable of supporting mission-critical apps, especially with the advent of VMs, the cloud, and the IoT.” Network performance monitoring (NMS) has become one of the primary responsibilities of a network admin.

What is involved in network performance monitoring?

Network Performance monitoring is an approach to isolate the basic reason for performance problems associated with network traffic by analyzing a group of performance metrics. These metrics distinguish between information transmission problems (network delays) and application problems; thus, we all know the team to be contacted to resolve the incident that provides exhausting proof of the scope and its impact.

Deep dive into NPM

A network performance monitoring tool is responsible for the fault, performance, & availability monitoring to proactively detect, and troubleshoot issues related to network performance and downtime. Using a topological view from an NPM tool, users can get in-depth visibility of the network nodes connectivity whether it is on-premise or in the cloud.

Generally, with the help of tools like this, the process of root cause analysis speeds up and the drop-in network performance can also be improved further. Correlation is, of course, a bonus! It is important to keep a track on exhaustion metrics using pre-defined thresholds based on the average usage. This can also ease the process of capacity planning for your resources. NPM can help you to improve the quality of end-user experience with the help of packet capture and its analysis.

Other Key Features of NPM:

Compatibility with SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) provides users with a standard framework for network devices and their respective network monitoring managers to interact with one another. Most of the network devices which can connect to an IT infrastructure, including routers, switches, load balancers, and other network devices, are generally compatible with SNMP.

Since SNMP is commonly supported, ideally your NPM tool should support this as well. This protocol allows your NMS to communicate with the network devices to streamline device monitoring.

Bandwidth Utilisation Reports

Bandwidth utilization is one of the most critical aspects organizations need to pay attention to. In case if your network bandwidth usage is getting too close to the max rate of information transfer due to a single resource, consuming the maximum bandwidth, your IT teams should also be made aware of this. NPM tools should provide these reports on your bandwidth utilization across the entire IT infrastructure on a day-to-day basis.

Visualize your Network

IT infrastructures of businesses are generally too overwhelming to visualize it in your head. That’s where network topology comes handy; it helps you picture your network by creating a visual representation. Certain Network Performance Monitoring tools feature topology & Google API integration capabilities, to map every connected device. NPM software like Motadata automatically update the network topology maps in real-time. With this, users can save time rather than manually updating the topology, every now and then.

Scalability of Network Performance Monitoring Tool

Organizations have an ever-growing network infrastructure that keeps on accommodating new hardware and network connections. You’d want to make sure that your NPM tool is capable of scaling up/down as required. Businesses that run multiple distributed networks must select their NPM tool wisely so that it can pinpoint and fully help you resolve network issues. Of course, leaving any section of your network unnoticed or un-monitored would be the last thing you would want at any scale/ size.

Real-time notifications and alerting

Problems or downtime in your network might happen at any time, & your IT team needs to know about it as quickly as possible. NPM tools notify network administrators of any potential problems as per the pre-defined thresholds. They can also filter alerts that are based on potential impact. This also implies that the issues can be prioritized; factors that lead to drastic performance-related issues will be attended first.

Need for Network Performance Monitoring

  • Unexpected traffic bottlenecks preventing access to key network services
  • Reactive drawback resolution taking over time from the additional systematic development
  • Use of multiple tools for monitoring that does not offer purposeful and actionable insights through a unified dashboard
  • Alert noise
  • When Return on Investment (ROI) is not realized
  • Your current resolution is cumbersome to use and doesn’t cover up for all your monitoring needs

Choosing the Right Tool

Motadata’s Network Performance Monitoring Tool is capable of monitoring the performance and availability of a multivendor IT environment for complete visibility of IT infrastructure. It has open API architecture capable of supporting any custom out-of-the-box monitoring requirements with plugins. Using Motadata’s NPM users can make sure that the issues never stay untraced.