When you're responsible for keeping a business network up and running, you have a lot of things to do on a regular basis. Monitoring bandwidth and network traffic can be a tough job. Your company's network literally has millions of bits of data being transferred every second. Trying to keep everything an eye on all the aspects of your network can quite simply be more than one person, or even one fully staffed department is capable of. Network administrators and IT professionals need to know what the status of their networks is around the clock, but no one is capable of doing all of this on their own. While you can't do it all by yourself, there are some tools and techniques you can use to help keep your network monitoring tasks up to date.
Computer Level Network Monitoring Programs
Keeping your network safe and secure from viruses, worms and other external threats requires a lot of time and energy. Users can make some pretty louse choices about what they do with their computers. The end results can be that your company's network is exposed to some pretty malicious code. Network administrators need to have the best network monitoring programs available that are able to do some serious computer level monitoring to stop these threats before they infiltrate a network. A good monitoring program will keep you alerted about potential risks or breaches of security that occur at the computer or user level. You can find some great network security suites that feature some great computer level monitoring and protection software. You can also make some powerful changes at the domain level to keep users from exposing your network to potential threats. Using good, restrictive group policies can go a long way toward keeping your company's network more secure.
Network Monitoring
You will have to be concerned with more than just the individual workstations on your network. You have to have a broad view that allows you to monitor the entire network. Every operating system has built in monitoring utilities that you can make use of. These programs can show you real time and historical data to get a good idea of what is going on with your company's network at any given time. Check with your administrative suite of programs that came with your servers. There is a good chance that you will have quite a few utilities and programs already on hand that can help you to effectively monitor your network. It's always good to make user of network monitoring programs that you already have on hand.
Third Party Network Monitoring Programs
Another option for monitoring your network is to purchase third party applications. There are some pretty powerful tools available. If your company has a generous budget for IT security, you should investigate some of the tools that are on the market that might make your job as a network professional easier to do. As you know, these software packages can get pretty expensive, and some can be extremely proprietary. Be sure to read up on any software that you are considering helping with your network monitoring. You want to get the best deal for your company's money and to find network monitoring programs that are going to work seamlessly with your network environment.
Choosing the right products and methods for network monitoring is one of the most important choices you can make.
Author Resource:
The Caring Host is a Shared Web Host and provides a fair hosting guarantee - The Caring Host doesn't oversell their servers. The servers are 130% powered by windmills, 30% extra power returned to the grid than is utilised! You may possibly also like this recent weblog post: Solar Power Auto Cooler