Response Time Monitor

Response time is the length of time between an inquiry being made on a system and when the system reacts and responds.

Response time is a combination of the wait time and service time for any given request. Wait time refers to the amount of time the inquiry had to spend waiting in the queue before it was serviced. This time can range from zero to many multiples of the service time if there are already many other requests in the queue addressed first. The other half of the response time equation—service time—refers to the amount of time it actually takes to complete the inquiry.

Response time is generally used as a measurement of general system performance. Low response times often reflect that your system is performing optimally, while higher response times may indicate an issue with your system performance. Typically, the wait time for inquiries increases in a non-linear fashion the busier a device or system becomes. The busier the system is, the more dramatic the response time increases will seem.

Understanding response time is important for maintaining optimal performance in a system. Response time plays a role in a variety of different computing technologies, including memory handling, disk I/O, loading webpages, and database queries. Given how important having low response time is for maintaining optimal system performance, response time monitoring should be an element of any organization’s performance monitoring and optimization efforts.

Response time monitoring is the process of collecting and tracking metrics on the amount of time it takes systems to respond to inquiries. It consists of network availability monitoring and network latency monitoring.

To maintain optimal performance, network engineers need tools to monitor real-time availability of devices in their environment. That’s where response time monitoring comes in. When you monitor response time, you can monitor the availability of multiple devices in real-time and obtain important latency information. This information can help you identify requests receiving slow response times and pinpoint where the problem causing the slow response time may be, whether it’s an issue in the server, the network, or in the data retrieval protocols themselves.

The core elements of response time monitoring revolve around network latency and availability. Network latency, sometimes referred to as network response time, refers specifically to the amount of time it takes for packets to travel from a sender to a receiver. One of the key elements of response time monitoring, a response time test, involves sending a packet to determine how long it takes for it to travel from point A to point B.

The other key element when it comes to monitoring response time, network availability, involves using simple network management protocol (SNMP) to regularly scan the devices within your network for key performance metrics to detect, isolate, and resolve network issues related to performance, like slow response times.

Comprehensive response time monitoring typically involves using a tool collecting response times and performing response time tests at a granular level. A response time monitoring tool might let you analyze the availability and latency information for multiple devices with five-second granularity.

The response time monitoring process involves comparing current response times within your system to predetermined baselines for normal behavior. It requires monitoring how much time elapses at each point in the process from when a request is made to when it is fulfilled. By comparing current response times to those baselines, you can more easily identify anomalous behavior and pinpoint where in the process the issue occurred. This insight lets you begin diagnosing the problem and troubleshooting resolutions more quickly.

There are two main protocols for monitoring response times and determining where response times are degraded. The first method is used for devices that support SNMP. These devices can be monitored for packet loss and network latency. With a response time monitoring tool, you can use SNMP timeout settings to determine what an acceptable response time is before the tool assumes there’s a problem and notifies you.

The second method uses a ping tool to send ICMP packets as part of its response time tests. The tool sends ICMP packets to your target IP addresses, then measures both the response time and packet loss. Like with the SNMP timeout settings, the ICMP timeout method lets you set the maximum amount of time the tool will wait for a response before determining the node is unresponsive.

Using a response time monitoring tool can give you a level of granular insight into the availability and latency of your devices you could never achieve through manual response time monitoring. You can diagnose and begin resolving issues more quickly, ideally even before end users are impacted by the slower response times. Overall, monitoring response time can be crucial for your organization’s bottom line.

With a response time monitoring tool, like SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset, you can monitor the availability of multiple devices in real-time and obtain latency and availability information in tabular form. Additionally, tools like ETS allow you to set the polling interval for selected devices based on your bandwidth needs. With a response time monitoring tool, you can get detailed real-time statistics for metrics like status, device name, IP address, availability, and response time, instantly. This real-time visibility empowers you to discover degradations in response time quickly, so you can begin troubleshooting solutions before end users feel the impact.

With a response time monitoring tool, you get a higher quality of monitoring than you could if you attempted manual monitoring and clearer visibility into the collected data thanks to clear, intuitive interfaces and charts. These interfaces make it easy to zero in on the information you’re searching for without being overwhelmed by all the data the tool is collecting. They can also help you focus on a single node and time, so you can see how response time has changed over any period from a day to more than a year. Being able to easily compare current and historical data is critical for effectively understanding how response times change and for identifying why degradations in response time might be occurring.

The ability to set and send alerts is key to any quality response time monitoring tool. To make sure you aren’t inundated with unnecessary notifications and alerts, it’s important to use a tool with some form of intelligent alerting. You can specify thresholds, alerts, and types of notifications based on your specific needs.

SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset comes with a powerful alerting system that gives you real-time alerts on your response time monitoring. In addition to the alerts in the Response Time Monitor, ETS also comes with the Watch It tool—a network monitor designed to monitor response times for system devices including servers, routers, workstations, and websites.

When Watch It detects a network response time starting to degrade or packets being dropped, it notifies you. First, there’s a change in the interface where the light next to the device experiencing the issue switches from green to yellow. Second, ETS offers audible alerts through Watch It. You can manage these alerts to play an audible alarm when response time degrades, a problem is detected through a response time test, a device starts dropping packets, or it changes states. You can also configure the alerts to only play an alarm when one of those issues is detected. With these alerts, you can feel confident knowing response times won’t degrade without your knowledge.

SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset doesn’t just monitor response time. It includes over 60 tools designed to help you monitor and manage network performance for optimal results.

In addition to a variety of tools involving response time monitoring, ETS also includes tools for log management, security, IP address monitoring, network monitoring, config management, SNMP, network discovery, and diagnostics.

Just a few of the tools in ETS are:

• Interface Monitor
• Traceroute
• Network Traffic Generator
• DNS Analyzer
• Memory Monitor
• Ping Sweep
• SNMP Sweep
• IP Network Browser
• Subnet List
• Syslog Server
• WMI Browser
• Network Sonar

Read more about ETS tools.