The Network Monitor

GeoEngineers is a small business with enterprise demands and a lot of pressure on its network. As an engineering firm with 400 employees located in 12 offices, managing the network presents many unique challenges. For example, its earth science engineers must be able to back up project files and submit data from the field at any time of day and from any location.

Here at Ipswitch I have the pleasure of working closely with U.S. Government agencies to help them sort out their most pressing network monitoring challenges. Government IT pros know they need tools to monitor their networks but have a difficult time choosing one. And once they buy what seems right, it can end up costing even more time and money trying to get it to work right.

The IPv6 protocol has consistently made it into top-10 and tech-prediction lists for years now but, as noted by Wired, IPv4 addresses are finally drying up.

Auditing network inventory can be time-consuming and tedious. It’s only amplified for organizations with an IT environment that spans across multiple locations. Making matters worse, manual inventories lead to outdated information and issues with compliance audits. But don't just take our word for it.

When you think of best practices in IT, what comes to mind first? Maintaining a very solid security posture? Sure, that’s a big one. But what about IT asset management? (Or IT inventory management, as the case may be.) If you don’t know what's attached to you network you're likely a lot less secure than you think.

There is only a day left until Ipswitch Innovate 2015 and to get you excited for this fun and informative virtual summit, we had the chance to interview some of the speakers prior to their sessions.

Leading up to Ipswitch Innovate 2015, we were fortunate enough to survey the presenters at our upcoming virtual conference. We asked each of them several questions about their pain points as IT professionals.

Leading up to Ipswitch Innovate 2015, we were fortunate enough to survey the presenters at our upcoming virtual conference. We asked each of them several questions about their pain points as IT professionals.

Ipswitch Innovate Virtual Summit will be here before you know it. Between now and the kickoff on Wednesday, October 21, I’ll continue to preview our sessions to be presented by eight customers and Ipswitch experts. Today brings us a best practices story by Michael Roth, the senior systems engineer at University of North Georgia. His talk is called “Inventory Automation with WUG.” (WUG is shorthand for WhatsUp Gold, in case you didn't already know.)

High on the list of network engineering nightmares is a business critical process failing because it didn’t receive adequate bandwidth. With applications, users and data competing for bandwidth, how do you assure your business-critical applications are getting the bandwidth they need for optimum performance? The best approach is a combination of network QoS (Quality of Service) policies and bandwidth utilization monitoring.

Today we announced the results of our Summertime Blues Survey. The findings reveal that IT pros felt the heat this summer as they worked to keep networks buzzing along for remote workers. The study confirmed that most organizations see a significant expansion in the number of remote workers throughout the summer months, which can make the job of a network manager or sysadmin more difficult.

It’s time to ask the question: Is your network monitoring software Network Admin Friendly? You may already have software in place to monitor your network, applications and servers, but the question remains, is that software actually working for you? Click here to answer these five easy questions to see for yourself.

The NCAA March Madness tournament is officially underway, and players and coaches aren’t the only ones who need to be ready.  With a majority of the initial games taking place during business hours, IT departments across every industry know that this means increased stress on the network and decreased employee productivity. Last year, March Madness Live delivered an unprecedented 64 million live video streams, which netted out to about 13.5 million hours of live video consumption.

The phrase “quick and dirty” is popular in the business world, but in some ways it’s really kind of a misnomer. Take for example an IT department that is stuck in the mud of network, applications and server performance problems. Things are certainly dirty, but they are definitely not quick.

Most people tend to associate the Dark Ages with horrible things like war, famine, disease and Monty Python but they probably don’t associate it with network performance and availability issues. Unless that person happens to be an IT administrator.

https://www.snapapp.com/ I had a lot of conversations with IT Directors, network administrators and other IT staff at FETC this past week in Orlando.  As we talked about their top priorities and challenges, there were three topics that kept coming up over and over again.

There is nothing like the excitement of Christmas morning, and if history is any indicator, on Thursday morning Wi-Fi is going to slow to a crawl all over the U.S. and beyond.

Yesterday we announced the results of our second annual “Happy Holidays?” survey where more than 200 IT pros shared compelling data on the impact that network issues have on their ability to enjoy the holidays. To the surprise of no one, IT pros are bearing the brunt of the burden in keeping organizations operational during the holiday season.

In July of this year, Enterprise Management Associates published a landscape review entitled EMA Enterprise Network Availability Monitoring Systems (ENAMS) Radar Report 2014.  A blog post written by my colleague Jim Frey on the EMA site reviews the scope and objectives of the report.  The study covered Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold version 16, along with sixteen other ENAMS from fifteen other vendors.

There are all kinds of potential IT emergencies out there that we should always be prepared for, network outages, system failures and data breaches come to mind as examples. However, there is another phenomenon that is starting to creep its way into enterprise networks: the zombie apocalypse. While it may sound like the plot of a B-level, made-for-cable Halloween movie, Network Zombies have quickly asserted themselves as the most troublesome nemesis to the modern-day IT administrator. They are dangerous and unpredictable, and without the right approach these zombies can cause downtime and lost productivity. However by adopting an approach that generates greater levels of network visibility, IT departments can effectively neutralize zombie problems once and for all.