Network Performance Management Software

Enterprise network performance monitoring and management are essential if your organization relies on computer networks for daily operations. More specifically, this kind of network software can help:

• Improve network reliability: Regularly monitoring your network will allow you to detect and address performance issues before they escalate into major problems. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and ensures that the network remains reliable, which is crucial for business continuity—and automated network performance management tools can take things a step further.

• Enhance user experience: Turning to network performance management solutions also allows organizations to deliver a better user experience—and if you have faster response times and can optimize your network resources, you’ll likely see improved user satisfaction and productivity.

• Cut costs: By using dedicated tools to optimize network resources, your organization can resolve bottlenecks, minimize inefficiencies, and reduce bandwidth costs.

• Improve capacity planning: Monitoring your network will give you insights into network traffic patterns and usage trends, meaning you can more efficiently allocate your resources to meet your current and future needs.

Yes, you can use Network Performance Monitor’s network management features on wireless networks. In fact, NPM is capable of automatically recognizing and monitoring any 802.11 IEEE-compliant autonomous access points and wireless controllers. Plus, it can provide insights into your wireless clients, thin APs, and rogue APs.

With NPM, you can view wireless data, migrate data from the Wireless Networks Module, and monitor your Meraki wireless infrastructure and SD-WAN for VeloCloud orchestrators.

Network Performance Monitor makes scanning and discovering devices across your network faster and easier than ever!

But before you can start, you’ll want to decide which devices you want to monitor and ensure your preferred monitoring method is enabled on your devices. WMI is generally enabled by default on Windows devices. When it comes to SNMP monitoring, you’ll need to ensure your devices allow access to the SysObjectID and check that any Unix-based devices use the Net-SNMP (5.5 or later) version that’s specific to the operating system in use.

You’ll also want to think about which IP ranges or individual IP addresses you want NPM to scan, determine the SNMP v1/2 and SNMP v3 community strings and credentials for the devices, and find the login, VMware host credentials, and Windows credentials when necessary.

Next, you can start the scanning and discovery process! If the Discovery Wizard doesn’t automatically start, you can go to Settings and Network Discovery. Then, click Add New Discovery and Start.

For your first discovery, you can add a limited number of IP addresses on the Network panel. You can use a variety of scanning options with this network performance management software like:

• IP Ranges: NPM will let you scan IP ranges, allowing you to discover all devices within the selected range.

• Subnets: You can also scan every IP address in a subnet. This will return everything that responds to a ping, so we suggest only scanning subnets where you’d like to monitor most of the associated devices. Also, we recommend scanning a /23 subnet (or 512 addresses) at most.

• IP Addresses: If you only need to monitor a few devices with IP addresses that don’t fall in a range, this is a great option, particularly if you’re just starting out. Instead of running a potentially lengthy network discovery job, you can enter select IP addresses.

• Active Directory: You can even scan an Active Directory Domain Controller. Using Active Directory for discovery simplifies the process of adding large subnets, as the discovery won’t need to scan every single IP address. Instead, it can just use the devices already specified in Active Directory.

Every nine minutes, NPM polls nodes for data—and the easiest way to identify a problem is to set up alerts. Some, like the Node Down alert, will be enabled by default, meaning you’ll see it immediately on your Home page. You can also configure NPM to send you email alerts.

If you find a node that is experiencing a problem, click its name. This will open the Node Details page. You’ll want to check the power and ensure the LAN link light is on. If these are both fine, you can log into the device and begin troubleshooting. You may want to look at the node’s memory utilization, CPU load, packet loss, and response time statistics to see if the problem is an ongoing one or a temporary blip. It’s also worth noting that some node types will provide additional widgets and information, such as hardware health (hardware) and routing table information (routers and switches).

You might turn to:

• SolarWinds^® Network Configuration Manager (NCM): Network Configuration Manager is a comprehensive network management system that can help you cut costs and save time. Not only does it offer network automation and inventory, but it also features vulnerability detection, network auditing for compliance, and automated configuration and network backups. NCM can also simplify device configuration, switch configuration, and network configuration tasks.

• SolarWinds^® NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA): NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is another useful tool. This module was built on the SolarWinds Platform and offers real-time network utilization and bandwidth monitoring. You can use NTA to monitor traffic flow across your network, gaining insights into traffic’s source, destination, volume, and congestion points. This will allow you to analyze and optimize traffic within your network and spot potential problems quickly.