What is network monitoring?
Network monitoring is the process of constantly monitoring a computer network for problems such as slow traffic or component failure. Network Monitoring tools are always scanning the network and are designed to automatically notify network administrators via text, email, or other applications such as Slack when a problem occurs. Network monitoring software differs from network security or intrusion detection systems in that network monitoring is focused on internal network issues such as overloaded routers, server failures, or network connection issues that could impact other devices.
Network monitoring solutions can also initiate failover to remove problem devices or circuits from duty until remediation can be performed to repair the issue. Ideally, a proactive network monitoring solution will prevent downtime or failures before they occur by identifying anomalies that could lead to outages if unchecked.
Why Nagios Monitoring tool?
Network monitoring software tends to check the health and activity of internal systems via the network by sending a signal known as ping, to various system ports. The system uses a wide variety of check intervals which can be explained as the time between two consecutive pings. This could vary from every single minute to every four hours.
Nagios is an open-source monitoring system for computer systems. It was designed to run on the Linux operating system and can monitor devices running Linux, Windows, and Unix operating systems (OSes).
Nagios software runs periodic checks on critical parameters of application, network, and server resources. For example, Nagios can monitor memory usage, disk usage, microprocessor load, the number of currently running processes, and log files. Nagios also can monitor services, such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and other common network protocols. Active checks are initiated by Nagios, while passive checks come from external applications connected to the monitoring tool.
Top 5 Features of Nagios Software
Top 5 Features of Nagios Software include:
- Real-time performance monitoring: this software constantly observes a network and reports on its performance issues. This software even delivers metrics on network performance in real-time.
- Intelligent alerts: The most important work of network monitoring software is to alert the users of the problems in their networks. This software usually provides all the information, including the location and severity of the problem, and even prioritizing more crucial problems.
- Network maps: The software can even draw a visual representation of what the network looks like as they have a picture of all the devices connected to a network. The administrators use these network maps to look at an abstraction of their networks, which is required by organizations with highly branched and complex networks. These maps contain all the visual information on nodes and devices which lets the developers check the performance issues at a glance.
- Automatic discovery of device: Network monitoring software includes device discovery capabilities that allow the platform to monitor new nodes. Usually, the software will automatically discover devices as they’re added to the network. This saves developers from having to manually sweep for added devices.
- Issues diagnosis and root cause analysis: The network monitoring software provides diagnosis and root cause analysis on problems it discovers to ensure that users can properly address network performance issues. This saves a lot of time figuring out the issue manually and going straight to fixing the problem.
We at Tetra provide implementation and customization services on Nagios. With a team having high expertise in Nagios, we are the right partner for Nagios deployment for your organization.
