Let’s face it, things haven’t been anywhere close to normal lately. With the coronavirus pandemic changing how—and where—we’re working, IT teams are facing more challenges than ever. On top of their usual work of keeping things running smoothly, they’re seeing increased stress on infrastructure and network devices from the increase in remote work.
To ensure network health, your team needs to determine what “normal” looks like on your network. That way, any abnormal activity can be easily spotted for a proactive response. While finding your normal may seem difficult right now, network monitoring software can help take the burden off your team to keep things up and running at optimal levels.
Here are three steps to help you keep your network running like normal—despite the circumstances—with a network monitoring solution like Intermapper, from Fortra:
1. Determine Current Status of Your Network Components
Now, more than ever, IT professionals need network visibility at their fingertips. Live network mapping software helps users view the current state of their network infrastructure in an easy-to-digest format. With this high-level view, you can start determining your normal with an inventory of all the devices currently connected to your network and help you start spotting any areas for improvement.
Network monitoring with a flows analyzer—like Intermapper Flows—helps you see the current state of your network’s bandwidth usage and consumption. Is traffic flowing where it should? Do you need to increase bandwidth or put limits on bandwidth hogs? Getting visibility into top talkers and other traffic statistics gives you the tangible evidence on the areas you need to improve on your network.
2. Compare Current Performance with Past Levels
Normal looks different for every organization. Network monitoring software helps you easily compare your current performance with past levels to identify your optimal performance levels. Because it doesn’t matter if they’re in the office or working from home, employees expect uninterrupted access to devices, applications, and other network services that keep your business going.
Knowing your normal helps you set an established level of performance so that no matter what happens, you can always provide users with the services they need. Network monitoring alerts you to potential bottlenecks or performance issues and helps you spot other abnormalities like potential Denial of Service (DOS) attacks or other security flaws. This level of visibility lets you spot problems before they become bigger issues, so you can proactively eliminate downtime and keep things running smoothly.
3. Re-establish Thresholds and Alerts
Normal changes over time for every network. And it’s changing even more rapidly due to the pandemic. Keeping your network at optimal levels will be a matter of trial and error, but network monitoring software will help make it much easier. Use a network monitoring tool to easily re-establish thresholds and alerts that make sense in your current environment and adjust as needed.
React to network changes even faster with a network automation tool. With resources low and IT staff already overworked, network automation helps lighten your team’s load by setting network alerts that trigger automation commands for pre-determined responses. You can automate anything from restarting failed devices to reconfiguring device settings for instant remediation.
It’s never been more important to be proactive about your network monitoring strategy. Stay one step ahead of the changing environment with a network monitoring solution that helps you easily spot any abnormalities that could lead to outages, slow performance, or even security breaches.
Find Your “Normal” with Network Monitoring from Intermapper
Determine what “normal” looks like on your network with a free, 30-day trial of Intermapper.
