Why is network monitoring critical for your business? | Checkmk (2023)

Many companies have built up their network infrastructure over years – increasing its complexity –regardless of whether the networks are small or large. Keeping track of this can quickly turn out to be a Sisyphean task, but this is essential to be able to provide a high-performance network. Holistic network monitoring can also shed light on such complex IT infrastructures.

What should an organization look for when choosing its network monitoring solution? Which functions should a monitoring software provide to keep the effort for installation and maintenance as low as possible in both small and large IT infrastructures? Which devices, performance metrics and network interfaces should be monitored? Why do many companies waste potential by only checking the status of their network? What are the benefits of network analysis? In this article, we will try to answer these and other questions in more detail.

A functioning network monitoring is, in fact, indispensable for maintaining the business operations of any company – regardless of size, industry and product portfolio. Only with a functioning network can employees work efficiently, production lines produce faultlessly, and services be provided with high performance. No company can afford network failures or performance losses. However, holistic monitoring can help them to minimize these risks.

Companies that monitor their network infrastructure are able to get an overview of their entire infrastructure. This means there are no more blind spots, and that undetected problems which can affect the performance of the network are a thing of the past.

Furthermore, a powerful monitoring helps companies to resolve faults more quickly, since potential sources of problems can be quickly eliminated. The analysis of real-time and historical data also makes it easy to identify critical trends in the IT infrastructure. This also leads to a significant reduction in the workload of IT teams, as they are able to prevent problems in advance instead of investing a lot of time in researching causes and rectifying faults – this allows them to devote themselves to other, more productive tasks.

In principle, the effort for IT operationteams should be reduced by using a monitoring software. This can already be accomplished during the installation: Depending on the approach, the implementation and operation of a monitoring tool can be simple and easy to manage. Once installed, it not only helps to monitor the network, but can also – depending on the functional scope of the monitoring software – provide an all-encompassing view of the IT infrastructure including the IP (Internet Protocol) devices used. This includes classic network components such as routers, switches, access points or firewalls as well as other devices connected via IP such as sensors, printers, servers, etc.

With such an IT monitoring, the administrator can, among other things, monitor the status of the devices in the network, detect abnormalities and identify bottlenecks.

Technological trends such as Smart Home, Smart Office or IoT have ensured that more and more devices are connected to a network via IP. So which devices should be included in network monitoring? The answer is simple: all of them. Monitoring should always claim to monitor the entire IT infrastructure – and preferably with an all-in-one approach. This means that the used monitoring tool should be capable of monitoring the entire IT infrastructure.

This enables a holistic view of the entire IT infrastructure and the consolidation of all information in a central location. The use of different specialized solutions not only leads to monitoring silos, but also increases the chance of something important being overlooked, or not being taken into account at all. Such blind spots will take their revenge if there is a disruption or a drop in performance.

For monitoring, this means that in addition to the classic network components such as switches, routers, access points, firewalls, sensors, UPSs, network printers, etc., all other end devices should also be included in the monitoring, regardless of their operating system (such as Linux, Unix, Windows, etc.). Monitoring server platforms – whether they are physical or virtual and based on Linux, Windows or any other operating system – is also no problem with the right network monitoring software.

In addition, good network monitoring includes the monitoring of all ports in a network environment.

To know what is happening in the corporate network, it is necessary to monitor various parameters of the network components. The monitoring tool should be able to monitor, among other things, packet rates, error rates, bandwidth, and the state of the ports on the various switches and routers – regardless of the manufacturer. The IT team needs to monitor not only whether the devices are performing, but also whether the switches and routers themselves are still functioning. To do this, the team shouldbe able to keep an eye on other performance parameters such as CPU load, fans, power supply, temperature, etc. with the help of the software they use.

For firewalls, it is also useful to include the general status, the status of VPN tunnels, the level of availability, and other key indicators in the monitoring. This is the only way to ensure the security of the network.Learn more about VPN monitoring.

For organizations that operate a WLAN in addition to a wired network infrastructure, the monitoring tool used should also be able to provide some metrics such as the status of access points and WLAN routers, signal strength and connected devices. WLAN monitoring can help to reduce problems when operating a wireless environment in the company. Since a functioning WLAN is highly dependent on external influences, it is essential for a company to include the infrastructure components for the wireless environment in the monitoring.

Network monitoring as an elementary component of a functioning IT infrastructure should also be possible without a great deal of experience in this field. This already starts with the required amount of work when integrating all components in the network. A good monitoring tool not only supports the majority of all device manufacturers, but also knows how to deal with the characteristics of the various components independently.

This means that after installation, the tool automatically scans the entire network, a specific IP range or subnet for existing devices and then automatically integrates the devices found into the monitoring process. In the ideal case, during the scanning process the monitoring software recognizes the type of device and from which manufacturer it comes and, based on this knowledge, automatically includes the relevant metrics into the monitoring.

This way, the monitoring software monitors the most important performance parameters of the respective devices from the outset, and defines meaningful threshold values as standard, the exceeding or falling below of which will trigger an alarm or notification to the IT manager. Manual configuration of the monitoring instance is thus reduced to a minimum – for monitoring both small and large network infrastructures.
This has two enormous advantages: Inexperienced users, who for example are looking for a monitoring tool for a network environment with few devices for a small company, benefit from a low entry hurdle. For administrators of large corporate networks with numerous diverse network devices, the effort involved in manual configuration is significantly reduced, allowing them to set up comprehensive IT monitoring for scalable infrastructures within a short time.

For the monitoring of large and complex networks with different locations and differently connected components, a monitoring software that works with a rule-based configuration is also suitable. With a few simple steps, administrators can use rules to define a policy – such as monitoring only the error rate of all access ports – for monitoring a large number of similar devices.

This makes sense, because behind each access port there is a user with his terminal device. If this user switches off his PC, the administrator receives an alarm because the port is offline, although this is actually a common procedure. For the IT manager, however, the error rate of the access ports is an important value that he should monitor. Using rules, they can therefore define that no more alarms should be sent if an access port goes offline, but simply want to stay informed of the error rate of the ports. In this way, they will receive all important information and not be drowned in a flood of ‘false alarms‘ simply because a user has shut down his PC.

The IT administrator defines the desired policy in the form of one or more rules. A rule-based monitoring solution then handles the monitored systems based on this policy. For example, a specific policy can be automatically enforced for all devices at a particular location or device group or with a particular operating system. If necessary, the administrator can also change this policy at any time with a few simple steps, without having to touch thousands of data records. Exceptions are also possible at any time and are documented via rules. Automation via rules also makes it easier and less error-prone to include new hosts in the monitoring.

While rule-based monitoring is not absolutely necessary in small environments with, for example, two hosts, it can be used to full effect in larger environments with hundreds of hosts, saving the administrator a lot of time when implementing and configuring new devices into the monitoring. On the other hand, with a monitoring tool that takes a template-based approach, the administrator may need to manually configure each device to be monitored on the network.

In order for the monitoring software to provide the desired metrics, it must be able to retrieve the necessary data from the various devices. Various options are available for this purpose: SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), Microsoft's WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), agents of the monitoring software, or proprietary interfaces (APIs).

Most common is monitoring with SNMP, which has become the de facto standard in network monitoring since its introduction in the late 1980s. The protocol is supported by almost all manufacturers, which means that they have implemented an SNMP stack on their hardware. The monitoring instance is thus able to retrieve the data required for monitoring from almost all devices by default – such as the CPU load of the firewall, the toner level of the network printer, the temperature in the server room, or all information on the interfaces of a switch. Read more about SNMP monitoring.

Since most manufacturers do not allow the installation of third-party software on their hardware, SNMP is in any case a good way to monitor these devices – provided the device supports the protocol, and when the implementation of the SNMP stack also complies with standard guidelines. If this is not the case, SNMP monitoring can quickly lead to problems.

SNMP monitoring is often mistakenly referred to as agentless monitoring. In fact, with the SNMP implementation, an agent, or software, is actually located on the devices that process the queries and collects the information. The correct description would therefore be monitoring without additional installation effort on the network devices – somewhat more complicated than agentless monitoring.

But the installation of an additional monitoring agent is not a bad thing per se. It often provides much more detail about the network device than the SNMP implementation. Especially in server monitoring, the use of a monitoring agent can provide much deeper insights.

In addition, it is possible – if the monitoring software supports this, for example with a specially developed agent – to retrieve the monitoring data via the API of the respective manufacturer, if such an API is available. This API is often more stable than the existing SNMP implementation and is therefore often better suited for monitoring. Finally, from time to time, programming errors or poor implementations can cause problems with SNMP monitoring.Read more about SNMP stories from hell.

All in all, the monitoring tool of choice should be able to provide holistic monitoring of the IT infrastructure with as little manual effort as possible. This way, monitoring solutions not only help to avoid blind spots in your own IT infrastructure – an additional benefit is the detection of shadow IT, i.e. hardware or software that employees have connected to the company's IT infrastructure without the knowledge of IT.

The problem with shadow IT is that these are often consumer products. These usually do not have the necessary security features, or are not provided with the required security patches by their producers, so that such hardware or software can quickly prove to be a gateway for cyberattacks into the corporate network.

If a business department uses a cloud service without the knowledge of the corporate IT department, it is also possible that corporate data ends up in the cloud – thus compliance rules can be violated. Comprehensive network documentation can significantly reduce the problem of shadow IT. At the same time, the company can prevent a potential gateway for cyberattacks into the corporate network.

The network scanner in a monitoring software tries to identify as many components as possible when scanning the IP ranges. The result is not only a topology of the network infrastructure, but also information about all hardware components and software solutions in the network.

In addition to a network scanner for IP monitoring, good monitoring tools also have an inventory function. This means that a softwarewith such an optional module allows documentation of the devices and software packages located in the network. This can be, for example, the software version on a server, the expansion of RAM components on a server, the BIOS version of a main board, serial numbers of the installed hard disks, or which ports of a switch have not been used for a longer time and could therefore be free.

The monitoring solution can then pass this data on to a third-party solution, such as a license management system. This data can also help to check whether a particular software package has been installed on a server. The monitoring tool can also alert the administrator if there has been a change to the hardware or software. Ideally, with only a single, good network monitoring solution, an IT manager should be able to comprehensively monitor the status of his entire IT infrastructure. He also receives complete documentation of the company's IT, and is able to track changes to the hardware and software without having to use another third-party solution such as an inventory scanner.

Enriched with historical data, an IT manager thus obtains a holistic view of the status quo of his or her IT infrastructure and can analyze what is going on in it. In this way, it is possible for the administrator to identify anomalies in bandwidth, CPU load or memory usage. The monitoring tool enables them to detect possible performance bottlenecks by monitoring various metrics. This not only helps to identify bottlenecks, but also to avoid potential problems before they occur. The monitoring software also functions as a tool for network analysis, and supports the IT department, for example, in managing the capacity of the IT infrastructure.

For example, by analyzing the monitoring data, an IT manager can determine that the existing performance of the firewalls in use may no longer be sufficient, and that they must therefore be replaced by more powerful devices in order to continueproviding a high-performance and a secure network.

Should a problem occur, the holistic monitoring of the network including all of its interfaces helps to quickly isolate the cause of a failure. This helpscompanies to save significant time in the search for the cause and speed up the resolution of the problem.

Since many companies rely on SNMP to monitor their network environment, the analysis of network traffic is limited to the data provided by the SNMP agent – such as the bandwidth on the various network interfaces. This gives the administrator a very good insight into the utilization of their network. However, in order to gain a more precise understanding of what is going on in their IT infrastructure and what the interrelationships are, they must conduct a deeper analysis of the network. This requires special network analysis functions and protocols that provide a more thorough insight into the traffic in the network environment.

The traffic analysis can be done by a packet sniffer, which processes and evaluates the collected data, and thus can contribute to the analysis of a problem. In addition, packet sniffers also provide details from other information such as packet lengths, type of network protocols, response times, connection points, IP addresses, or which components talk to each other. This can help to detect suspicious network traffic.

The flow technology can also help them with capacity planning, for example by showing them how a new application, such as VoIP, affects the network bandwidth. Network flow also provides the necessary information for the sensible use of QoS (Quality of Service), i.e. the classification of services, and for the optimization of resource utilization. It can also support IT security by detecting DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, malware distributed in the network, and other unwanted network events.

Switches and routers make this data available via special flow protocols, such as NetFlow. This protocol was originally developed by Cisco and provides information about data flow and traffic volume. The aim of Cisco technology is to provide insight into critical areas by means of improved visibility in the network. These areas include application and network usage, network productivity and use of network resources, the impact of network changes, network anomaly and vulnerabilities, and long-term compliance issues.

In the meantime, other manufacturers, such as Juniper Networks or Huawei, are also using flow technologies. With IPFIX (Internet Protocol Flow Information Export), the IETF has introduced an industry standard based on NetFlow Version 9. Network flow collectors collect and process the flow data records of routers and switches. These then transmit the processed data to an analysis console, which provides the administrator with the desired insights. Learn more about network flow monitoring.

Environments struggling with poor WLAN coverage or a weak WLAN signal can quickly identify and counteract causes and possible sources of interference with a Wi-Fi analysis.

In addition, network monitoring should also take into account the infrastructure for the provision of the wireless network. The administrator must therefore include WLAN access points, WLAN routers and WLAN controllers in the network monitoring. Here it is not only advisable to monitor the bandwidth used on the WLAN components, but also other parameters such as the status of the individual devices, the number of subscribers or the signal strength.

With this data, network administrators can not only ensure that the WLAN infrastructure is equipped to meet the necessary requirements in terms of bandwidth, access points and coverage – they can also use the monitoring data to put the capacity planning of their WLAN environment on a fact-based footing, enabling them to take the necessary measures even as the demands on the infrastructure increase and thus avoid WLAN failures or performance drops. Read more about Wi-Fi monitoring and analysis.

Whether large, distributed IT infrastructures or small networks with only a few hosts, whether wired or wireless: network monitoring is indispensable for organizations to ensure that business operations run as smoothly as possible. Companies that decide on a network monitoring software that provides all the functions listed above benefit, among other things, from a holistic view of their network. They also receive all the important information they need to identify problems in their IT infrastructure, to detect bottlenecks early or to identify trends. This way, the administrator no longer has to react, but can instead focus on other projects.

The range of services provided by Checkmk includes all the above-mentioned requirements for a modern, holistic network monitoring. Convince yourself – test it now.