What are the Ways to Monitor your Computer Network?
Monitoring the network can be a tedious task, especially when it’s a large one. As a network administrator, you have to ensure that your computer network systems are running smoothly and that no outages occur on your watch. Keeping a constant eye on your network helps to increase the network efficiency; especially by knowing bandwidth and resource consumption.
There are different tools out there to help a network administrator in monitoring a network system for slow or failing components. Most of these tools help to monitor, and notify the network administrator of slow, failing components, and resource consumption and send notifications to the network administrator through email, SMS or alarms)
Cisco being the world leader in network administration and protection has several types of network admin tools including routers, switches, firewalls, wireless Access Points, VPN Concentrators etc etc.
Network Resources to monitor.
There are different resources including hardware to monitor your network. These resources and tools used for network usage, speed and availability should be constantly monitored for effective performance.
Network usage monitoring: This helps the network administrator to accurately access and monitor CPU and server load and usage.
Network speed Monitoring: this especially deals with monitoring the bandwidth usage and speed. High Bandwidth usage and load speed can prevent your company’s websites and network services can being frustrating to your website visitors or users by slow-loading pages, and downloading files or images.
Monitoring Network availability: The company’s websites, mail servers, and lease lines are network resources that are mostly accessed by both internal and external parties for services, these resources should be constantly monitored for for availability.
Monitoring Network Security Systems: The security of your network should be your ultimate concern, network monitoring tools should include a traffic monitor that allows you to view everything on your network. Your network users and IP addresses that access your network are to be monitored to make sure there is no unauthorized access to files and private company information.
Comprehensive Examples of Network Monitoring Tools.
Below is a comprehensive list and overview of various network monitoring tools, each designed to cater to different needs, ranging from open-source solutions for budget-conscious organizations to feature-rich options for enterprises.
1) Nagios
Overview: Nagios is a powerful, open-source network monitoring tool known for its versatility in monitoring network services, host resources, and server components. It offers extensive plugin support, allowing users to monitor virtually anything.
Key Features: Real-time monitoring, alerting capabilities, and a robust user community. It’s highly customizable through plugins and scripts.
Use Cases: Ideal for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking for a cost-effective solution with the flexibility to monitor a wide range of network components.
2) Zabbix
Overview: Zabbix is another popular open-source network monitoring tool. It excels in monitoring network health and utilization, server performance, and web application metrics.
Key Features: Auto-discovery of network devices and configurations, a built-in web-based interface, and scalability. It supports SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface).
Use Cases: Suitable for businesses of all sizes due to its scalability. It’s particularly valuable for organizations that require detailed monitoring of their IT infrastructure.
3) PRTG Network Monitor
Overview: PRTG Network Monitor is a unified monitoring solution that provides a comprehensive view of your IT infrastructure, including networks, systems, hardware, applications, and more.
Key Features: Easy to use with a web-based interface, customizable dashboards, and over 200 sensor types for monitoring various network components.
Use Cases: Best suited for SMEs and large enterprises looking for an all-in-one monitoring solution with minimal setup complexity.
4) SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
Overview: SolarWinds NPM is a feature-rich, enterprise-grade network monitoring tool that offers extensive visibility into network performance and potential issues.
Key Features: Advanced network performance metrics, intelligent alerts, and a customizable dashboard. It also includes features like NetPath for critical path visualization.
Use Cases: Ideal for medium to large organizations needing comprehensive network visibility and performance analytics.
5) Wireshark
Overview: Wireshark is a widely used network protocol analyzer that allows you to capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.
Key Features: Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, live capture, and offline analysis. It’s invaluable for troubleshooting and education.
Use Cases: Highly beneficial for network administrators, security professionals, and anyone looking to analyze network traffic for diagnostic and educational purposes.
6) Datadog
Overview: Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform that provides full visibility into the performance of your network, applications, and services.
Key Features: Real-time performance dashboards, seamless integration with various applications and services, and an AI-powered alerting system.
Use Cases: Best suited for cloud-centric organizations that require a scalable and integrated approach to monitor their distributed network infrastructure.
7) ManageEngine OpManager
Overview: ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive network management software that offers network monitoring, physical and virtual server monitoring, and network mapping.
Key Features: Customizable dashboards, over 2,000 built-in network performance monitors, and automated workflows.
Use Cases: It’s particularly useful for IT teams in medium to large enterprises needing a robust tool for end-to-end network management and monitoring.
Each of these tools offers unique features and benefits, making them suitable for different types of organizations and IT environments. The choice of a network monitoring tool depends on various factors including the size of the network, the complexity of the IT infrastructure, budget constraints, and specific monitoring needs. It’s important to evaluate these factors thoroughly to select a tool that best fits your organizational requirements.
Cisco Network Monitoring Tools.
Cisco, a leading provider of networking equipment and technologies, offers a variety of network monitoring tools designed to ensure the performance, security, and reliability of networks. These tools cater to the diverse needs of modern IT environments, from small businesses to large enterprises. Below are key Cisco network monitoring tools, highlighting their primary features and typical use cases:
1) Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Overview: Cisco Prime Infrastructure simplifies the management of wireless and wired networks, integrating lifecycle management and application visibility and control. It offers a single integrated view of the network, making it easier to manage devices, applications, and users.
Key Features: Centralized management, monitoring of network health and performance, troubleshooting, detailed reports, and a comprehensive view of the entire network infrastructure.
Use Cases: Ideal for organizations that need a unified solution for managing both wired and wireless networks, offering detailed insights into network operations.
2) Cisco DNA Center
Overview: Cisco DNA Center is at the heart of Cisco’s intent-based networking. It provides a centralized management dashboard to control and manage policy, automation, and analytics across Cisco networks.
Key Features: Network automation, assurance and analytics, secure segmentation, and integration with third-party solutions. It also offers insights into user experience and threat detection.
Use Cases: Suited for enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of intent-based networking to automate network operations, enhance security, and improve network performance.
3) Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Overview: The Cisco Meraki Dashboard offers cloud-managed network monitoring and management. It simplifies the management of Meraki’s wireless, switching, security, and smart camera solutions, providing visibility and control over the network from anywhere.
Key Features: Cloud-based management, real-time analytics, automatic updates, and an intuitive user interface. It supports zero-touch provisioning and has built-in security features.
Use Cases: Best for businesses of any size that prefer cloud-managed IT solutions for simplicity and ease of deployment and management.
4) Cisco Network Assistant
Overview: Cisco Network Assistant simplifies wired and wireless network management for small to medium-sized networks. It provides a user-friendly interface for network discovery, management, and troubleshooting.
Key Features: Configuration wizards, drag-and-drop network topology views, easy software updates, and basic troubleshooting tools. It’s designed to manage networks of up to 80 devices.
Use Cases: Small to medium-sized businesses looking for a cost-effective tool for network management with minimal complexity.
5) Cisco Stealthwatch
Overview: Cisco Stealthwatch uses NetFlow, IPFIX, and other types of telemetry to provide network visibility and security analytics. It detects and responds to threats in real-time across the entire network.
Key Features: Advanced threat detection, network behavior analysis, encrypted traffic analytics, and incident response. It integrates with other Cisco security solutions for a comprehensive security posture.
Use Cases: Enterprises needing advanced security analytics to detect stealthy threats and anomalies in network behavior, especially in environments with high volumes of encrypted traffic.
6) Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Overview: The Cisco Nexus Dashboard serves as a centralized management platform for data center networks, simplifying operations across Cisco Nexus infrastructure and hybrid cloud environments.
Key Features: Real-time operations dashboard, automation tools, and operational insights. It integrates with Cisco’s data center management and automation tools, such as ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) and NX-OS.
Use Cases: Large enterprises and data center operators requiring a unified view and management of their data center networks, with a focus on automation and operational efficiency.
Each Cisco tool is designed with specific network environments and objectives in mind, from basic network management for small businesses to advanced analytics and security for large enterprises. The selection of a Cisco network monitoring tool should align with the organization’s size, network complexity, and specific monitoring and management needs.
Microsoft Network Monitoring Tools
Microsoft offers a range of tools and platforms designed to monitor and manage network performance, applications, and infrastructure within IT environments. While Microsoft’s portfolio primarily focuses on software development, productivity, and cloud services, several of their offerings are particularly relevant for network monitoring and management, especially for environments that are heavily integrated with Microsoft technologies or that utilize Azure cloud services. Below are key Microsoft tools that are utilized for network monitoring and management:
1) Microsoft Azure Monitor
Overview: Azure Monitor provides comprehensive solutions for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry data from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources they depend on.
Key Features: Includes application insights for web monitoring, log analytics for data-driven insights, and network performance monitoring and diagnostics.
Use Cases: Ideal for businesses leveraging Azure for their cloud services, needing to monitor the performance and health of applications, infrastructure, and network.
2) Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
Overview: SCOM is a cross-platform data center monitoring system for operating systems and hypervisors. It uses a single interface that shows state, health, and performance information of computer systems. It also provides alerts generated according to some availability, performance, configuration, or security situation being identified.
Key Features: Deep monitoring for Microsoft applications, infrastructure monitoring across various environments, and customizable dashboards.
Use Cases: Best suited for organizations looking for a comprehensive monitoring solution that can manage both on-premises and cloud environments, especially in hybrid setups.
3) Windows Admin Center
Overview: Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser-based app for managing Windows servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, as well as Windows 10 PCs. It gives you full control over all aspects of your server infrastructure and is particularly useful for managing servers on-premises and in Azure.
Key Features: Offers tools for troubleshooting, performance monitoring, configuration, and maintenance of servers and virtual machines.
Use Cases: Ideal for IT administrators who need a versatile tool for managing servers and VMs across various environments, particularly in Microsoft-centric organizations.
4) Microsoft Network Monitor
Overview: Network Monitor is a deprecated protocol analyzer. It allows you to capture, view, and analyze network traffic. Although Microsoft has officially replaced Network Monitor with Microsoft Message Analyzer, it’s still used in some scenarios for network diagnostics.
Key Features: Real-time capture and display of network traffic, customizable capture filters, and detailed analysis of captured data.
Use Cases: Useful for IT professionals who need to troubleshoot network issues or analyze network traffic for specific applications, mainly in legacy environments. Note that for current needs, Microsoft recommends using more modern solutions.
4) Azure Network Watcher
Overview: Azure Network Watcher provides tools to monitor, diagnose, view metrics, and enable or disable logs for resources in an Azure Virtual Network.
Key Features: Network diagnostic tools, metrics, and logs for analyzing, monitoring, and troubleshooting Azure’s network performance and health.
Use Cases: Essential for administrators and network professionals who manage Azure cloud environments, requiring deep visibility and diagnostics of virtual network resources.
Microsoft’s ecosystem provides robust tools for network monitoring and management, catering to a wide range of needs from cloud-based and hybrid environments to on-premises data centers. These tools are particularly beneficial for organizations invested in Microsoft technologies, offering deep integration with other Microsoft services and products.
Linux Network Monitoring Tools
Linux environments are known for their flexibility, robustness, and a wide range of tools available for various applications, including network monitoring and management. Due to Linux’s open-source nature, many powerful tools can be utilized for detailed network analysis, monitoring, and troubleshooting. These tools are often preferred for their efficiency, customization capabilities, and the strong community support they receive. Below are key network monitoring tools that are widely used in Linux environments:
1) Nagios Core
Overview: Nagios Core is an open-source, powerful network monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes.
Key Features: Offers comprehensive monitoring of network services, host resources, and servers. It features alerting services for identifying issues with network components, services, and applications.
Use Cases: Suited for businesses of all sizes that need customizable and extendable network monitoring solutions. Its plug-in architecture allows users to develop their own service checks.
2) Zabbix
Overview: Zabbix is a free, open-source software for monitoring networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services. It offers performance and availability metrics for a wide range of network devices and IT components.
Key Features: Features include real-time monitoring, visualizations, alerts, and reporting. Zabbix supports SNMP and IPMI, and can predict trends in your IT environment.
Use Cases: Ideal for enterprises looking for a scalable solution that can monitor thousands of devices across different locations.
3) Wireshark
Overview: Wireshark is the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what’s happening on your network at a microscopic level and is the de facto standard across many industries and educational institutions.
Key Features: Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, live capture, and offline analysis. Wireshark has a rich feature set including a well-organized interface and powerful filters.
Use Cases: Extremely useful for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education.
4) Cacti
Overview: Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool’s data storage and graphing functionality. It provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box.
Key Features: Offers graphing, data source, and host management capabilities. It’s particularly known for its network graphing functions.
Use Cases: Best suited for users who need a graphical representation of their network bandwidth, especially in large-scale network environments.
5) Prometheus
Overview: Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built by SoundCloud. Since its inception, it has become a community project and is now used by many organizations. It is designed for reliability, offering a multi-dimensional data model, a flexible query language, and time series data.
Key Features: Features include a powerful query language (PromQL), no reliance on distributed storage, and a time series database. It supports precise alerting rules.
Use Cases: Ideal for monitoring of microservices, application monitoring, and alerting in cloud-native environments.
6) Netdata
Overview: Netdata is a highly-optimized Linux daemon providing real-time performance monitoring for Linux systems and applications, via web interface.
Key Features: Real-time performance monitoring with minimal impact on the system. It offers thousands of metrics, pre-configured alerts, and an extensible web dashboard.
Use Cases: Suitable for those who need instant diagnostics and insights into their Linux systems and applications, particularly for performance issues.
7) Iftop
Overview: Iftop is a simple, real-time console-based network bandwidth monitoring tool. It displays bandwidth usage on an interface by source and destination.
Key Features: Displays bandwidth usage on an interface by source and destination. Offers a simple, real-time view of network activity.
Use Cases: Useful for administrators who need a quick and straightforward method to monitor network traffic and bandwidth usage on a Linux system.
These tools collectively provide a broad spectrum of functionalities for network monitoring, from basic bandwidth analysis and protocol inspection to comprehensive network health and performance monitoring. Selection of a particular tool or a combination of tools depends on the specific needs, scale, and complexity of the network environment. Linux’s flexibility and the availability of these powerful tools make it a preferred platform for network administrators and IT professionals.
