Four types of network monitoring

Network monitoring can take many forms, depending on what needs to be monitored. Let's take a look at the four types of network monitoring, as well as the specific mechanisms and protocols that can provide the appropriate level of visibility that enterprises need.

Network monitoring can take many forms, depending on what needs to be monitored. As network architectures become more software-centric and decentralized-from a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud perspective, network teams may find it difficult to understand various types of network monitoring methods and tools.

 

Let's take a look at the four types of network monitoring, as well as the specific mechanisms and protocols that can provide the appropriate level of visibility that enterprises need.

Availability monitoring

Availability monitoring is the easiest way for the network team to know whether the equipment is operating normally. Some availability monitoring tools do more than just monitor whether the device is completely online or offline. Specific interface status notifications and network device hardware checks usually fall into this category.

 

Examples of commonly used protocols for monitoring network availability include:

• Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). ICMP ping is a simple verification test used to show whether the device can be accessed on the network.

• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP monitors the status of equipment and interfaces.

• Event log (syslog). When an uplink, interface, or route becomes unavailable, the Syslog collection server can trigger an alarm.

 

Configuration monitoring

For those who manage traditional network components that use local configuration files, configuration monitoring checks are very important. From a performance and IT security perspective, automated tools are essential. These tools can compare similarly configured devices for inaccuracies.

 

These tools usually take the command line output of the device configuration file and compare it with other files on the network that perform similar tasks. The network team can investigate the differences between the configurations to ensure that all network components are set to the same operation.

The main functions of configuration monitoring include:

• Real-time monitoring of network configuration changes and who made the changes;

• Automatically roll back the configuration when unauthorized changes occur;

• Comparison of configurations between network devices to find configuration errors.

 

Performance monitoring

Although there is some overlap between network availability monitoring and performance monitoring, there are obvious differences between the two.

 

Availability monitoring pays more attention to the operating status of the components that make up the network infrastructure, as does performance monitoring, but places more emphasis on the end user's performance experience. Therefore, performance monitoring focuses more on network utilization, delay, and suboptimal path selection.

 

Examples of performance monitoring protocols include:

• SNMP. This will send an alert when the interface, switch CPU, and memory are overused.

• Event log (system log). When utilization reaches a certain threshold or unexpected routing changes occur, the system log triggers an alert.

• Flow-based monitoring. This provides visibility into specific network stream conversations and the amount of bandwidth consumed by each stream.

• Packet capture analysis. This provides in-depth analysis of network conversations, which often reveal low-level transmission problems, which are not recognized by upper-level monitoring tools.

• Streaming telemetry. This is the collection and analysis of real-time network operating conditions and performance data, which is used to quickly identify and solve complex problems.

 

Cloud infrastructure monitoring

In many cases, for private cloud and public cloud instances, companies can deploy the same type of network monitoring tools on the corporate network. However, many cloud service providers provide their own built-in network monitoring tool suite. Although these cloud monitoring tools are usually free, these tools often cannot be integrated into other third-party tools that companies are using.

 

Enterprises must weigh the pros and cons, and consider whether to manage multiple distributed network monitoring services or spend more time and effort to concentrate monitoring on a few tools. The requirements for deploying these tools may be higher, but they help provide full visibility into the enterprise network and the cloud.

Improvements in modern network monitoring

Several significant advancements in network monitoring can help ease the management and support burden on ITOps employees. For example, many network architectures can be configured and managed entirely through a centralized cloud portal. In many cases, the central control plane is pre-built with countless network monitoring tools and alarm functions, which means that separate third-party tools are no longer needed.

 

Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, other popular improvements are hardware or software agents that can be used to monitor the network performance of home office employees and micro-branch offices. These hardware and software-based tools enable ITOps employees to monitor the network performance of remote users, no matter where they work.

 

Finally, the use of AI and machine learning in network monitoring tools can help eliminate many manual processes and speed up the identification and repair of network-related issues. Whether it's performance or security related, facts have proven that artificial intelligence is of great value in finding problems, determining root causes, and in some cases automatically repairing network incidents.