Top Network Monitoring Challenges (And How to Mitigate Them)

With the rapid advancement of technology and the increasing reliance on interconnected systems, network monitoring has become an indispensable practice for businesses of all sizes. Organizations can ensure seamless communication, maintain optimal productivity, and protect against cyber threats by monitoring network performance, ensuring zero trust network access, and identifying potential issues. However, effective network monitoring comes with its own set of challenges.

According to a report by Statista, in 2019, the global network management systems market amounted to 5.83 billion U.S. dollars. By 2026, the market was forecast to exceed 13 billion U.S. dollars. This shows a significant growth of network management in coming years.

This article will delve into organizations’ top network monitoring challenges and explore strategies to mitigate them effectively.

Top 6 Network Monitoring Challenges

Achieving Fuller Network Visibility

Understanding the operations of your network is crucial for effective management. This requires gaining a comprehensive insight into your network through enhanced visibility. You can achieve this by closely monitoring traffic patterns and detecting any unusual behavior within the network. With a clear and well-presented network architecture, you can obtain valuable insights to evaluate and improve key performance metrics.

By leveraging smart visualization techniques, you can maximize your organization’s performance, efficiency, and security. With a powerful network monitoring tool that provides a complete view of your architecture, you can gain comprehensive visibility into all aspects of your organization. This allows you to make informed decisions and take proactive measures to enhance your network’s performance and security. By implementing these techniques, you can ensure your organization is always running at peak efficiency.

Determining Useful Performance Data and Insights

Each enterprise has unique requirements to consider when implementing network performance monitoring. Analyzing various performance metrics and establishing performance expectations and baselines tailored to the organization’s needs is essential. The same approach is not effective in ensuring optimal network performance.

Companies need to sift through vast amounts of data and extract valuable insights to make informed decisions about network performance. An effective network monitoring tool enables you to identify and prioritize specific metrics that matter to your business, allowing you to gain actionable intelligence and make data-driven decisions. By separating the wheat from the chaff, you can accurately evaluate your network’s behavior and improve its performance.

Drawing Network Maps

To ensure comprehensive network monitoring, it is crucial to visualize your entire network. By examining every connection and device in your network, you can effectively monitor its performance. Fortunately, most network monitoring tools include network mapping tools that clearly represent your network. This lets you quickly identify all devices connected to your network, enabling you to easily monitor your entire enterprise network.

With effective network mapping techniques, you can easily prevent dark areas from appearing in your network. Advanced monitoring tools can display various visualizations based on your network’s performance metrics, enabling you to quickly identify and address any red areas. By utilizing these visualizations, you can quickly determine which devices perform optimally and which may require attention. This approach simplifies network performance management and makes it easier for network administrators to grasp its overall performance.

Adapting to Amalgamated Monitoring

Maintaining a well-balanced network requires a combination of both active and passive monitoring. Active monitoring provides real-time monitoring of all devices within the network, identifying and resolving bottlenecks instantly. On the other hand, passive monitoring creates a replica of the network architecture and simulates performance bottlenecks to fortify the network against any potential threats. By integrating both types of monitoring, you can ensure your network’s optimal performance and security.

To ensure uninterrupted network operations, it is crucial to maintain harmony between both types of monitoring. However, selecting the proper monitoring solution that caters to the specific needs of your network can take time and effort. To address this challenge, opting for a network monitoring tool that supports both monitoring types is recommended.

Avoiding Downtimes and Failures

As a network administrator, it’s crucial to prioritize preventing network downtime, failures, and outages. To achieve this, keeping a close eye on key metrics such as CPU utilization, traffic latency, and bandwidth utilization is essential. Constant monitoring of these metrics can help your team quickly identify and address potential issues before they cause downtime or disruptions. 

Ensuring your team is informed about network issues in advance is crucial. If your network is experiencing problems such as slowness or failure, your team must be notified quickly. However, traditional network monitoring solutions may need to catch up in this regard. Implementing a network monitoring solution that can promptly and effectively alert your team about any network issues is essential.

To effectively address network failures, your network team must have access to accurate and timely data. With the right network monitoring tools, they can receive real-time notifications about any issues. It enables your network engineers to respond promptly, analyze the problem and take corrective actions before it affects your users. 

Get the Right Network Baselines

Comprehending your network’s standard operations is essential to evaluate its current performance. By setting up baselines for data quality, your company can effortlessly track signal strength and access vital information. This approach offers a significant advantage as it helps you identify and address critical performance issues when your network’s performance falls below expected levels. Moreover, it allows you to determine when your connectivity is better than usual, helping your organization confirm that any network upgrades or reconfigurations genuinely improve the network’s performance.

As remote work trends gain momentum, network engineers must stay current with the latest technologies that can accommodate the increasing importance of user experience, visibility, and raw data in root cause investigation. Keeping track of networks has always been daunting, but managing them can be much simpler with the Virtual Work Environment (VWE). By leveraging VWE, you can get real-time access to crucial network data, improving your troubleshooting capabilities and guaranteeing an optimal user experience for your remote workforce.

Conclusion

Network monitoring presents numerous challenges in today’s ever-evolving technological landscape. However, implementing the right strategies and utilizing advanced tools can effectively mitigate these challenges. It is crucial to prioritize comprehensive network visibility, ensuring that all network components and traffic are monitored thoroughly. Additionally, leveraging automation and machine learning technologies can enhance efficiency and accuracy in promptly identifying and resolving network issues.