How does LAN monitoring work?

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.

Why is LAN monitoring important?

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.

How does monitoring and analyzing LAN performance help a network?

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.

How does LAN monitoring work in Network Performance Monitor?

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.

LAN Monitoring

Use a multi-vendor LAN monitor to manage networks of every size

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Analyze LAN Availability

Intelligent Alerts

Troubleshoot Devices

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Use a LAN traffic monitor to analyze network availability

Quickly view the availability of your core IT services and data center through refined alerting capable of dynamically grouping related systems and devices. SolarWinds^® Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is scalable right out of the box, designed to function smoothly and swiftly regardless of the size of your networks.

NPM LAN analyzer is built to perform detailed LAN monitoring and LAN mapping of routers, switches, servers, and other SNMP- or WMI-enabled devices. In addition, you can create customized network alerts and reports using out-of-the-box dashboards and best practice thresholds designed for easier network troubleshooting.

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Generate intelligent alerts with a LAN monitoring system

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Advanced LAN monitoring and LAN management includes customizable network alerts so you can set your own thresholds while also giving you immediate insight into network performance and the status of your network. You can customize alerts to notify the people who need to know about the emergent event and set alerts to send over email, text, and more.

The Network Insight^™ technology included in NPM uses targeted monitoring based on each device’s role within the network, built to create a tailored and more efficient monitoring system. The Network Insight feature can also help you identify potential problems with your switches, firewalls, and load balancers.

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Troubleshoot network devices with LAN monitoring software

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Complex networks with advanced hardware require proactive, real-time monitoring with more information than just whether a device is up or down. SolarWinds NPM is built to provide insights you can use to better analyze wired and wireless device performance by monitoring a wide range of device details, including current node status, device information, device information, average response time, packet loss, and more.

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Visualize connections with a LAN mapper

Efficient mapping, reporting, and alerting

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is designed to go beyond just a simple overview of applications, topology, and network connections by also providing automatic visual overviews of this data all in one centralized dashboard. Use intelligent Orion® Maps to automatically display physical and logical connections between devices so you can make informed troubleshooting and capacity decisions for your network. The maps are built to automatically update to incorporate new network connections, so you have real-time, at-a-glance visibility.

These intuitive mapping tools are designed by network and systems engineers to make it easier for NPM users to visually identify what may be causing network issues. You can even customize the reports for your organization with the ability to use custom background images and specify visual elements like colors and symbols.

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Get More on LAN Monitoring

Do you find yourself asking…

What is LAN monitoring?
How does LAN monitoring work?
Why is LAN monitoring important?
How does monitoring and analyzing LAN performance help a network?
How does LAN monitoring work in Network Performance Monitor?

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.

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.

"NPM makes my team proactive instead of reactive. We have 30 locations that we monitor and could not live without NPM."

Keith Gulledge

Network Administrator

Jefferson County Commission

Proactive LAN monitoring for better network performance

Network Performance Monitor

Gain multi-vendor fault, performance, and availability monitoring.
Quickly scan charts to see the health and performance of critical network gear.
View contextual visual maps of entities and their physical and logical relationships.

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NPM, an Orion module, is built on the SolarWinds Platform

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