What is Network Monitoring?

Network Monitoring consists of a way that an IT department can watch over all the servers, workstations and other network devices in an organization. If a piece of hardware or some software begins to fail, you can know about it before it causes an outage and take corrective action.

While this sounds like a great tool, previously, the resources needed to use it made it so that only large organizations could afford it. It was very complex and expensive. You would need a highly skilled person to operate the software and it would often require a large amount of configuration on each device. In addition, the hardware needed for the monitoring solution itself, could rival a small company's entire infrastructure. Obviously, if you had more resources commited to monitoring than to the things being monitored, it didn't make sense.

In recent years, SNMP and WMI have become common place and created a framework for the Network Monitoring to be utilized more easily. The proliferation of ASP models makes it so that the infrastructure to run the solution can be hosted and spread among several small businesses. This enables lower cost solutions and makes it available for small to medium businesses.

Now, with a lower cost and a distributed model. Small companies can leverage the experience, software and hardware of a larger company without breaking the bank. By implementing a Network Monitoring solution, they can have their servers and workstations patched; all the devices checked for security vulnerabilities and have services such as their email or web site checked for uptime. Troubleshooting time is reduced since the system will send alerts and bring most of the events together in a single place so that you can look for a trend.

A solution like this also helps companies analyze where they need to spend their IT dollars. Sometimes they think they need a new machine, but find out that just upgrading RAM will fix their problems. If you are a small company, you can't be diverting your attention away from your business. A network monitoring solution will help keep it on track without being over involved in day to day operations of the technology.