LAN Monitoring

Local area network (LAN) monitoring is a systematic series of observations, tests, and assessments performed on an internal computer network to detect slowdown or failure on the part of network components. Effective LAN monitoring is accomplished using monitoring tools, protocols, and thresholds to help identify the benchmarks against which network performance is measured. By setting warning and critical network performance thresholds, network admins can configure the LAN monitoring solution to preemptively alert when these thresholds are crossed to help prevent outages to LAN connectivity.

LAN monitoring software works by detecting potential network failures and performance issues like bottlenecks. LAN monitoring can help identify other common device issues, including overloaded servers, routers, switches, and other network devices. While not a part of a wired local area network, wireless network monitoring, or wireless LAN (WLAN), can also be important to consider in an overall network monitoring strategy.

This combination of a LAN monitoring tool and alerting thresholds can allow network administrators to select and modify the sections of the network they’re tracking, using data collected over time to maximize and improve network performance across all devices.

LAN monitoring works by tracking all aspects and devices using, accessing, or communicating via your local network—from devices users rely on daily, like individual workstations and networked printers, to routers, switches, and servers making up the behind-the-scenes network infrastructure.

To provide active monitoring of network reliability, the LAN monitoring system software tracks network parameters across all local devices. Performance metrics used to assess LAN network health can include: 

• Rate of data transmission (or throughput)
• Error rates
• Response time to both user and automated inputs and requests

By logging how each device performs over time, the network monitoring system data can help administrators know what areas of the network they may need to regulate and troubleshoot, which can help prevent a failure on the part of the affected device or entire local network.

LAN monitoring provides several benefits, the most important being it can provide better efficiency for the network—which can save time and money. Without a network monitoring system in place, locating what caused network issues can be time consuming and inefficient. At the same time, issues or faults in the network can interfere if not entirely impede the ability of employees to do work or access data and even affect potential customers who may rely on your local network to communicate or transact with your organization. LAN traffic monitoring helps provide clarity into nonoptimal resource use across your network, allowing you to quickly troubleshoot and identify what devices are to blame.

Since a LAN monitoring system requires every connection be registered and tracked, it can provide administrators with real-time information about network traffic and functionality. Monitoring and analyzing network traffic and performance allows administrators to troubleshoot more effectively and solve issues quickly, often without drastically interrupting network throughput. 

Networks can also be too large to monitor manually—some may include hundreds or even thousands of individual workstations, not to mention routers, switches, hubs, and networked devices. As companies expand, sophisticated network traffic monitoring and analysis tools provide valuable information about the health of a network as well as a clearer understanding of long-term trends in network usage. These tools can help administrators prevent network downtime and network failure, while making more informed decisions regarding network scalability.

Network Performance Monitor is built to combine powerful network monitoring tools with an intuitive design to help you streamline network functionality out of the box. Created by network and systems engineers who know firsthand the problems and struggles facing administrators, NPM is designed with swift troubleshooting options with multi-vendor network monitoring support, letting you increase your network service across the board while decreasing downtime. Its integrated Network Insight feature simplifies the management of network devices by tailoring the information monitored based on device role within the network, built to result in a faster and more effective monitoring process. NPM is also designed to be incredibly customizable—you can modify and tweak your dashboards, views, and analysis charts to suit your network needs and preferences. You can also design specific alert protocols to match the usage and performance of each of your networks.