In this blog we take a look at NetFlow and other network packet analytics; what they are; how they work; and most importantly, should you be monitoring it.
It's Summer! The weather is good...sometimes; many of us are taking well-earned breaks; and nature is in full bloom. What more could we need?
At least twice a year, we run an update webinar showcasing the latest release of Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold, to our customers, prospects and the curious alike. With Spring rapidly approaching (we hope), that time is upon us again with the release of WhatsUp Gold 2019.
Any environment which has SLAs or minimum levels of availability to achieve can become highly pressured one, in which any incident could possibly drag you closer to a red line which you have been mandated not to cross.
Ask any IT team what their worst nightmare is and they will likely recant tails of network outages with thumb-twiddling users, panicked management and the embarrassing discovery of a preventable cause.
Nobody is happy when the company network and systems are slow. Long wait times caused by slow applications and network speeds drain productivity throughout your organisation. As time goes on without a fix, users will start to lose their patience and faith.
One of the most useful things to have in your network monitoring toolkit is Network Traffic Analysis. It collects and processes network flow data, commonly available through features such as Cisco’s NetFlow as well as other network device manufacturers.
Network monitoring solutions and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) have been around for over twenty years; and has become a staple of many a network. With age comes a scepticism about how innovative such solutions can be; and whether or not they are commoditised, with literally hundreds of vendors offering such tools.
Being a bit of a technology philistine at home, I was only recently enlightened to the joys of IFTTT technology and how it is powering home automation and other integrations. I have to admit, as much as I prefer to leave IT to my day job, I was intrigued at the possibilities it could open up; and even more so, how this could benefit organisations.
Network monitoring software and solutions are nothing new, starting their humble beginnings with SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol) in the 1980s. Since then things have progressed to include easier to use protocols for monitoring such as WMI and syslog; as well as SNMP being upgraded to include authentication in version 3.