Network Performance Monitoring – Best Practices

5 min

Network performance monitoring is a complex process that involves more than one activity, like measuring, visualizing, monitoring, and reporting.

What is Network Performance Monitoring?

When talking about network performance monitoring, IT people usually refer to the process of visualizing, monitoring, optimizing, troubleshooting, and reporting on the health and availability of your network as experienced by your clients.

By applying the network performance monitoring best practices, MSPs, Commercial Integrators, and Enterprises help potential outages and proactively address network problems quickly.

Who Uses Network Performance Monitoring?

MSPs, Commercial Integrators, and Enterprises have unique priorities and approaches to network performance monitoring, reflecting their distinct roles and objectives. 

Choosing Key Performance Indicators and monitoring strategies reflects specific challenges and objectives, highlighting the need for tailored approaches to network performance monitoring.

When discussing network performance monitoring, let’s see the key differences between MSPs, Commercial Integrators, and Enterprises.

MSPs

• Objective: MSPs continuously monitor their clients’ IT infrastructure and end-user systems, often under a subscription model. Their focus is on reliability, security, and optimizing operations.
• KPIs: MSPs typically monitor KPIs like network uptime, bandwidth utilization, latency, packet loss, and response times to ensure they are meeting their Service Level Agreements (SLAs). They also prioritize security metrics, incident response times, and customer satisfaction levels.
• Approach: MSPs require continuous, comprehensive monitoring tools and strategies to anticipate and resolve issues before they impact the client. Their monitoring is proactive, with a strong emphasis on alerting and automation to maintain service quality.

Commercial Integrators

• Objective: Commercial integrators often focus on the initial setup and integration of network systems for their clients. Their monitoring primarily ensures that all components work together seamlessly and meet the project’s specifications.
• KPIs: They may prioritize KPIs related to the deployment phase, such as successful integration rates, installation time, and initial performance metrics. Post-deployment, they might monitor uptime, integration points functionality, and system stability to ensure everything operates as intended.
• Approach: Their monitoring might be more project-focused. So they ensure that new installations/integrations meet the required performance standards and are delivered on time and within budget.

Enterprises

• Objective: Enterprises monitor network performance to support their business operations efficiently, enhance employee productivity, and provide a seamless experience to their customers.
• KPIs: They may focus on a broad range of KPIs, including latency, packet loss, app performance metrics, and UX indicators. Security metrics are also crucial, alongside compliance with regulatory standards.
• Approach: Their monitoring is often more internally focused. Significant emphasis is on scalability, flexibility, and integration with other IT management tools. Enterprises might deploy in-house and commercial tools to monitor their extensive and complex networks.

This delineation in focus areas necessitates different strategies and tools for network performance monitoring tailored to meet the specific needs of each group.

Ten Network Performance Best Practices

Let’s explore the best practices for network performance monitoring, focusing on strategies that enhance reliability and efficiency in modern IT environments.

1. Define Objectives and Select Relevant Metrics: Identify what you aim to achieve with network monitoring and choose metrics that align with these goals. This could include metrics for bufferbloat grade, latency, packet loss, and more.
2. Implement Real-Time Monitoring: continuously observing your network’s health is one of the most important aspects. 
3. Ensure Scalability: Plan your network monitoring to accommodate future growth. In other words, select tools and practices that can scale with your network, avoiding performance bottlenecks as the network expands.
4. Establish a Performance Baseline: Determine the normal operating parameters of your network by recording performance under typical conditions. This baseline helps identify anomalies and potential issues more effectively.
5. Set Proactive Alerts: Configure alerts for early detection of potential problems. These alerts can notify you about deviations from the baseline, allowing for swift corrective action before clients are affected.
6. Achieve End-to-End Monitoring: Monitor every network component, from end-user devices to servers and network devices, to ensure a comprehensive view of network health and performance.
7. Incorporate Application Performance Monitoring (APM): APM tools provide visibility into how applications perform on your network. This will help pinpoint issues affecting application speed and user experience.
8. Analyze Historical Data: Review past performance data to identify trends, predict future challenges, and inform network capacity planning. Get access to historic data aggregation and optimize your decisions.
9. Integrate Security Monitoring: Combine network performance monitoring with security measures to detect and respond to potential security threats, ensuring both network performance and security are maintained.
10. Monitor User Experience and Conduct Regular Audits: Regularly assess network performance from the user’s perspective and conduct audits. This will ensure that the network meets business objectives and user expectations.

Ten Ways Domotz Can Help You Improve Network Performance Monitoring

Domotz offers extensive features that align with these best practices, enabling efficient network performance monitoring and management. For each of the previous 10 steps, we can associate a specific Domotz solution:

1. Define Objectives and Select Relevant Metrics: Swiftly identify performance and configuration issues using our advanced network troubleshooting feature.
2. Implement Real-Time Monitoring with Domotz: Take advantage of Domotz’s real-time monitoring capabilities. Detect and address issues immediately, ensuring prompt troubleshooting and resolution.
3. Ensure Scalability: Leverage Domotz’s scalable monitoring solution that grows with your IT infrastructure and efficiently manages increased traffic and data volumes.
4. Establish a Performance Baseline: Create a baseline for network performance, aiding in identifying anomalies and deviations that may signal potential issues.
5. Set Proactive Alerts: Configure Domotz to send proactive alerts. When performance metrics exceed predefined thresholds, an alert will be sent, allowing early detection and mitigation of potential problems.
6. Achieve End-to-End Monitoring: Employ Domotz for comprehensive monitoring across your entire network infrastructure, including servers, routers, switches, and endpoints. In other words, pinpoint the source of issues swiftly.
7. Incorporate Application Performance Monitoring (APM): With Domotz, monitor how specific applications affect network performance, identifying any bottlenecks that may impact user experience. [intregration]
8. Analyze Historical Data: Utilize Domotz’s data storage capabilities for historical performance data analysis, facilitating capacity planning and the identification of long-term trends or recurring issues.
9. Integrate Security Monitoring: Enhance your network’s security by integrating Domotz’s security monitoring features, ensuring prompt detection and response to security threats.
10. Monitor User Experience and Conduct Regular Audits: Use Domotz to monitor end-user experience metrics, such as application response times. In addition, regularly audit your network performance monitoring strategy to ensure it remains aligned with your evolving business needs.

To sum up, by adopting these steps and leveraging Domotz’s comprehensive features, enterprises can effectively monitor and manage their network performance, ensuring reliability, security, and optimal user experience.

Identify the features most used by MSPs, commercial integrators, and enterprises with Domotz.

Bottom Line

Network performance monitoring is a cornerstone for enterprises, ensuring their network infrastructure’s reliability, scalability, and security. It not only helps maintain a high level of operational efficiency but also aligns with broader business goals by supporting a resilient and secure IT environment. 

By following these best practices, organizations can enhance their ability to monitor, analyze, and optimize network performance, resulting in a more reliable and efficient network infrastructure.

Further reading:

• Choose Domotz for Superior IT Infrastructure Monitoring in 2024
• What is Network Design? 10 Network Design Best Practices
• How to Make a Network Topology Diagram or Map