The Importance of Network Monitoring in Your Business' IT Department

A good network administrator quickly addresses issues that jeopardize your company's network infrastructure. But a great one goes the extra mile and uses a reliable network monitoring solution to proactively identify, intercept, and prevent the issues.

What is network monitoring? And why should I care? Network monitoring serves as your eyes-and-ears, alerting you to any issues on your network. You can keep track of things like printer supplies, software installations, hard drive space, contract due dates -- just about anything you can think of that relates to your network.

The vast majority of problems that arise in a network are directly related to something changing. The best network monitoring solutions will not only alert you to these changes, but will also help you troubleshoot the issue by allowing you to compare your network's current state with what it looked like before the change. This means you can solve the problem faster!

The most proactive of IT pros set up their network monitoring systems to alert them via email or text message whenever issues arise. This not only keeps them on top of potential problems so they can address them as quickly as possible, but it also prevents them from creating an issue. Plus, this type of proactive problem solving makes you a household favorite with everyone from your boss to your customers!

What should I look for in a network monitor solution? While every network is different, there are four areas that any best-of-the-best network monitor should be able to do:

Monitor PC hardware and supplies: A key component to network monitoring is knowing when changes are made to your network devices. You need to be alerted when disk space is low, disks are removed or added, devices lose connectivity, or toner gets low so you can immediately address the problems.

Monitor software: Monitoring software is more than just keeping track of what is being installed and uninstalled on your computers. Proper network monitoring means:

Keeping track of installations
Noting which licenses are set to expire
Knowing which hotfixes (patches to fix specific bugs) are installed
Staying on top of the current state of all Windows services on each machine
Making sure all of your computers are protected with an up to date antivirus software
Monitor web traffic: Networks only have a limited amount of bandwidth for all employees to share. For instance, if one employee is using a large chunk of the bandwidth, it causes a traffic jam that negatively impacts everyone else on the same network. This becomes an even more pronounced issue when you use network switches and end up accidentally overloading another switch which leaves the others practically empty. The most effective network monitoring setup will let you see where bottlenecks are occurring and how evenly the devices are distributed.

Keep track of your IT services info: There are many things on your network you'll want to track that aren't necessarily physical objects, such as noting which IT service contracts are set to expire. It's not something you initially think of when working with a network monitor, but it can provide additional benefits such as helping your organization to save money. By giving you plenty of advanced notice that your IT contracts are set to expire, you allot yourself plenty of time to shop around and do your research to get the best deals.

Which network monitoring tool is best? OK, so now you understand how monitoring network problems will help keep your users productive, your bosses happy, and reduce your stress levels by addressing issues before they accelerate... but how do you know which network monitoring tool is the right one?

As with any other major purchase, you want to do your research and investigate which solutions software companies offer. You'll find plenty of companies out there with network monitoring solutions that could help your organization. But note that several network monitoring software packages cost thousands of dollars for setup and installation, training, maintenance, and regular patches and fixes. Not to mention, the amount of valuable time you'll spend evaluation each product to ensure it's worth its price.

Discover How Effective Network Monitoring Solutions Can Improve Your IT Efficiency

Though the term "network monitoring" looks and sounds like something that is easy to manage, the complex functions it can perform can actually improve your entire business.

Network monitoring tools can prevent unnecessary expenditure on network performance, timely analysis of all the data that is entering your network, increase employee productivity, and save a huge amount on your company infrastructure. Efficient management software carefully monitors your network, detects any unwarranted interruptions during the normal working of your system, and alerts you on security problems. The software works well in accordance with other antivirus programs, providing all the protection you need by eliminating any internal threats, providing more operational visibility, and meeting legal and compliance obligations.

Network monitoring software not only detects any failures and dangers within the network, it can also take proactive and corrective measures with the help of efficient monitoring tools and ensure the smooth upkeep of your network devices. The software will monitor devices such as routers, switches, printers, and faxes. You're assured bandwidth connectivity without connectivity problems, and you can enjoy uninterrupted communication with your clients. With the help of this software, you can monitor which applications are causing problems with your connectivity and address them before your employees experience a single issue.

Efficient IT management is all about foreseeing an emergency situation, updating your network management software, and monitoring constantly to prevent alarming attacks on your computer network. For the most successful of all network monitoring, take extra care of the IT vulnerability that can occur at any point of time in your office. Proper IT management processes include:

- Constant monitoring of all data including official, confidential, and personal information so that no hacker can enter and steal your data.

- Creating an updated backup copy of all of your important data and preparing you to act on any emergencies so that you do not have to rebuild networks from scratch if a disaster occurs.

- Designing an elaborate, efficient, and practical plan to recover your data in case of accidents. Your plan should be able to cover all the necessary information related to your clients, and protect the data they have given you for storage. This plan should also work as an alternative if a problem emerges so you can get your work back on track.

With the high-profile security breaches that could occur in all the big and small computer networks, you need something more than traditional network management tools. You also need network management software that has high visibility and optimum performance level and is highly efficient in foreseeing problems.

There is economical network management software that helps to reduce operational costs, increase employee performance levels, and deliver customer satisfaction. You can select the software that will work well with your business by managing multiple devices and several systems.

There are many software brands to choose from that will help you. When any problems are detected, your network administrators may receive an on-screen or email notification. Some automatic corrective measures include sound alerts, running scripts, and even rebooting and restarting the machines. Automatic discovery of TCP/IP nodes and creation of a topology map of physical and logical changes in the network, multi-platform monitoring, and real-time performance monitoring are key features that should come with the software package you select. For efficient network management, your company should have an updated corporate topology map where you can monitor different types of networks, different applications, desktops, and other remote devices.

Network Monitoring Solutions

Identifying what programs are using your computer's network connection should be pretty simple. You can check your taskbar and see if you have any download managers, web browsers and other applications or games that may depend on the Internet. But keeping your system connected to the Internet without a firewall or virus scanner can pose some security risks especially if your operating system isn't updated. What makes things worse is that you won't be able to detect there are network problems unless you use one or more network monitoring tools. There are a few reasons as to why it is important to perform some network monitoring on your system every now and then.

On a security perspective, network monitoring tools can identify any hidden programs that may be sending or receiving data. This can be bad in both ways since some malware are capable of sending your personal details while other malware can retrieve the necessary commands issued by a hacker to cause more damage to your system. By discovering which programs are doing these things, you can take action immediately. Network monitoring solutions without antivirus capabilities may not be able to tell the difference between bad programs and good programs but you can still try to halt the network activity once you spot it. Network monitors may also uncover programs that are using the network that virus scanners were unable to detect.

Network monitors can also be useful tools in determining why your network or Internet connection is so slow. There could be a single application running in the background that is trying to use all of the available bandwidth to update something or possibly acquire a malware. If the program is experiencing heavy loads, other applications such as web browsers may have difficulty in accessing the Internet. Once again, monitoring it can forcibly close those applications to restore bandwidth. Other network monitors may even allow you to set a bandwidth cap so the bandwidth distribution is more balanced.

Monitoring your network is also important in making sure that nobody accesses your wireless router. Thanks to the latest encryptions, it should be impossible to break into a secure wireless network with a lengthy security key. But hackers are persistent in finding holes and some will take advantage without you knowing it. But if you have a network monitor actively running, you can figure out immediately if someone bypasses the security. Some virus scanners and security suites may even show you a notification if there is something wrong with your network.

Monitoring your network is all about making sure that the most important applications are using the Internet right now. It is also about keeping your network secure at all costs just in case. When security measures fail and intrusions occur you can take action immediately using the data obtained from consistent monitoring.

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