The Network Monitor

Did you know that this year the number of Wi-Fi connected devices will exceed the world’s population? With the growing number of Wi-Fi connected devices, there have been more and more public Wi-Fi networks created. Nowadays, whether you are in a coffee shop or train station, there is probably a public Wi-Fi in your general area.

As a product manager of an integrated solution suite, it’s interesting to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between traditional systems management (OS deployment, inventory, software delivery, patching, monitoring) and its major trends (security, virtualization, cloud, efficient data centers) with network management (deployment and configuration, backup/restore, monitoring, traffic analysis, Quality of Service) and networking trends (mobile devices, cloud, virtualization, larger networking demands). There are many similarities between these two IT focus areas and I will “blog” about several aspects as I tie-in and compare systems management with network management over the next year. One similarity that is particularly easy to spot and “leaps off the page” for me relates to discovery. In fact, it ALL starts with discovery.

Goodbye spreadsheets, hello WhatsUp IP Address Manager!  With WhatsUp IP Address Manager you can stop using spreadsheets by automating the discovery and ongoing management of your IP space.  This easy to use, cost effective, enterprise-ready IPAM solution enables you to manage, optimize and protect your entire IP space.

While going through some old marketing supplies the other day, we stumbled across “Ipswitch Network Monitoring for Dummies,” written by Robert Armstrong in 2007. We were impressed with one chapter in particular and how relevant it remains today, more than 10 years later.

Customers frequently ask questions about the necessity of Syslog. "I have turned SNMP on and am collecting SNMP stats and alerts. Isn't that enough?" It depends.

In my current role I speak to a lot of network engineers trying to automatically map their network topology. Actually it’s more than that, they don’t just want to discover devices, the want a port level diagram of exactly how all their switches, routers, servers, workstations, phones, firewalls . . . you get the point. Some engineers I speak to practically ask:

In the words of Victor Kennedy, Director of Talladega County 9-1-1, “Networks don’t get more mission-critical than emergency communications.”

Maintaining a work-life balance is extremely difficult for some – especially network managers who are on-call 24/7. A great article titled Mobile Network Management Smartphone Apps for On-the-Go Engineers on SearchNetworking.com got us thinking about all the ways network management software for smartphones and tablets helps make network managers’ lives easier and achieve that work-life balance we all try so hard to maintain.

I'm sure many of you opened your browser to Google this morning to see the capitol of Kansas replace the search giant's name.

The Basics of WMI and Why You Need to Monitor It

Other's have already done it for you?

Here is a useful list of tips that network administrators can leverage in their everyday travails.

There has been a lot of buzz around WAN optimization over the past few months, with numerous mentions of what WAN optimization is and what it brings to the table. On the surface, it is certainly a cool technology, but it is a technology that requires some additional thought before implementing. It is certainly another great tool in the network managers arsenal.

Network Monitoring comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be as complex as a multi-site WAN distributed solution. Or, it could be as simple as reacting to end-users phone calls claiming that they can’t receive email.

Interesting thing virtualization, everyone is talking about it and lots of IT professionals are investigating it and quite a few are implementing it.

Breach, which is set for release in a few weeks, focuses on the true story of an FBI upstart who must investigate his boss who is suspected to be selling secrets to the Soviet Union. For those of you who read the story in paperback or in weekly new journals, a strong lesson materializes in a story early on that is applicable to the numerous breaches we have heard about at TJX and other retail and insurer organizations. Regardless of how strong and robust your physical and digital security plan is, the success or failure of the plan more likely will lie with the human capital charged with installing, managing and watching the systems.

From Network World's Network/Systems Management Newsletter: