The Network Monitor

I’ve been to many IT conferences over the years, some have been underwhelming, and some have been more than worth the trip. Cisco Live US 2016 last week in Las Vegas definitely falls into the latter category. And it’s certainly justified, grown men playing Pokémon Go aside. Our booth was “standing room only” from beginning to end and our conversations with our fellow IT brethren were very interesting and enlightening. Even Diglett stopped by to say hello.

I work in the IT business, so when something as monumental as Pokémon GO is taking over headlines for more than a week I usually ask a few questions. The first thing folks with an IT background ask themselves is how this phenomenon will affect the network bandwidth of a business. It’s an important question to ask, but the answer in this instance is, “Not at all.”

Over the years IT pros have had to get used to less autonomy in terms of what touches their networks. Back in the day, IT loved RIM’s BlackBerrys because they were built for security. They never liked Apple iPhones. They were built for consumers, not IT security pros.

Let's cut right to the chase here, the life of an IT pro is hard. With endless to-do lists stuffed with infrastructure maintenance, security management and support, it's always a new adventure. Unfortunately for us, it doesn't look like things are getting any easier. Technological trends such as BYOD have made many aspects of modern business more efficient, but they've also increased the complexity of IT environments and made processes such as endpoint security management a real thorn in the side of many an IT pro.

Navigating software licensing models has always been a challenge, but the rise of virtual computing and the cloud has made it even harder.

Vegas in July is kind of like a giant data center without AC.

Your first exposure to any tool can be daunting to say the least. In the instance of WhatsUp Gold, we strive to make that initial process of implementing IT monitoring as simple and smooth as possible. With some guidance you can harness the flexibility of this powerful tool fairly quickly, because we know that you don’t have time to be dealing with large learning curves.

To the non-technical, network performance management may seem like the activities of a secret society.

Picture this: Someone in your office decided to buy a new app. Maybe they told you about it ahead of time, maybe not. While you may rightfully assume this is a responsibility of an application development team, app monitoring often falls to sysadmins or network admins. Either way, if you develop an informal application footprint, you can save yourself headaches later. The seven tips below can get you started in developing a footprint for the application. They'll make you a smarter user of your network monitoring tool if the app ever strays into rogue territory.

Having a large number of network monitoring tools that only provide a partial view of your end-to-end environment is like five people with in the dark trying to describe an elephant by touching only a single body part.

Have you ever received alerts from WhatsUp Gold in the middle of the night that a service has gone 'down', only to login and check to see everything is apparently good and happy? Then, just as you're about to logoff, WhatsUp Gold labels the device as 'up' again?

The importance of port management (and every other aspect of network infrastructure) has grown exponentially as our dependence on connectivity has increased. Additionally, with the advent of mainstream IoT technology, port management's role in both IT management and security becomes even more critical.

 Sometimes scripting takes the Ninja kind of patience.

Last month we polled more than 1300 IT pros from around the world about their challenges with IT complexity. What we heard loud and clear is that there is far too much to get done, but not enough time to do it. Not to mention the time IT spends chasing down problems without full network visibility to find them fast enough.

Data archiving is an odd practice at times. When big data is focused on every last bit of information, the idea of relegating any amount of it to outdated media can seem like a waste of resources. Add the cloud and you begin to see how out of place this concept can be.

More complexity, fewer results. This is the general consensus among IT teams everywhere. IT infrastructures have evolved into a Frankenstein of servers, access points, applications, and mobile devices. To throw another wrench in there (pun intended), the tools we implement to control complex business networks end up increasing complexity due to the lack of integration between all of these tools. What you get is a tangled mess of solutions that only complicate matters.

If you do any security monitoring, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of events you need to track. You can start by doing longer hours, but eventually you'll end up in a swamp — sucked in to the point that workflow comes to a standstill.

Data transfer has come a long way. From 110-baud modems from the late 1950s to 56-kbps technology used at the turn of the century — and finally more familiar broadband and Wi-Fi — one thing is clear: Speed is an obsession. And while Wi-Fi has enjoyed significant adoption even as telecom companies fight for top spot in the mobile device market, there's still a drive to find newer, faster ways to move data and increase connectivity.

Most IT teams don’t have the budget or resources to satisfy the growing demands of their users. The demand comes in many forms, such as bandwidth consumption, Wi-Fi access, power utilization, and storage capacity; just to name a few.

The future of IT will be molded not just by technology, but also by changing expectations and attitudes toward support's role within the organization.