Network monitoring system

A network monitoring system monitors the network for problems caused by overloaded or crashed servers, network connections, or other Commonly measured metrics are response time, availability, and uptime.

Status request failures, such as when a connection cannot be established, it times-out, or the document or message cannot be retrieved, usually produce an action from the monitoring system.

These actions vary, An alarm may be sent (via SMS, email, etc.) to the resident sysadmin, automatic failover systems may be activated to remove the troubled server from duty until it can be repaired.

Some of the monitoring tools are…

• Microsoft Network Monitor
• Nagios
• Capsa Free
• NetworkMiner
• Pandora FMS
• OpenNMS

In effective network monitoring,

• The first step is to identify the devices and the related performance metrics to be monitored.
• The second step is determining the monitoring interval. Devices like desktops and printers are not critical and do not require frequent monitoring whereas servers, routers, and switches perform business-critical tasks but at the same time have specific parameters that can be selectively monitored.

Features of an effective network monitor software:

• Visualizing your entire IT infrastructure with further classifications based on type or logical groups.
• Automatic configuration of devices and interfaces with predefined templates.
• Monitor and troubleshoot network, server, and application performance.
• Implement advanced network performance monitoring techniques to quickly resolve network faults by getting to the root of the problem.
• Get advanced reporting features with the provision to schedule and automatically email or publish the reports.