Recently I came across an interesting comment by an IDC Market Analyst on Network Performance and Operation Management that really got me thinking.

“While performance management and optimization have been getting all the buzz, it really comes down to understanding and managing IP traffic over the network”.

As a network manager, you spend a good portion of your time discovering and mapping your network, overseeing the performance of your applications and underlying physical or virtualized infrastructure, troubleshooting problems and managing alerts, or simply sharing information and reports with all major stakeholders. You might even be archiving and reviewing log data to meet compliance regulations, or keeping a close tab on network configuration changes.

But IDC got me thinking: How many of you are currently monitoring your network traffic?

If you are using traditional methods of analyzing network consumption, such as link or device utilization, you don’t have adequate insight to determine which applications, servers, and clients are consuming network resources.

Ipswitch developed a solution for these limitations – the WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor plug-in.

Flow Monitor not only highlights the overall utilization of the LAN, WAN, specific device, or interface, it also indicates which users, applications and protocols are consuming the bandwidth.  And of course, like any other WhatsUp Gold product you can try it out free for 30-days!

Here are the top 3 reasons why I think you should try it out today:

1)      You will learn how your network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose, so you can find the root-cause of network slow-downs and performance bottlenecks

2)      You can properly measure bandwidth usage (e.g verifying ISP providers billing, or to ensure that ISP providers are meeting their SLAs) and properly plan for spikes in bandwidth usage (e.g to avoid dropped packages or delays)

3)      You will gain a wealth of information to help you secure your network – e.g  traffic abnormalities can help you detect virus and worms, failed interface connections is a good indicator of external attacks.

Good luck, and let us know what you think!! And if you’re already a Flow Monitor user, let me know what you’d add to my Top 3 Reasons to Try Flow Monitor list!