Bandwidth Monitor - The Need

Why Bandwidth Monitoring?

A network is the binding force that integrates different entities of a business, which is spread out, into one single powerful unit. With the (r)evolution of the Internet, there has been a sea change in the way business is conducted and networks have a huge impact in the functioning of the business. The functioning of these networks largely depends on bandwidth. Proper bandwidth management guarantees proper network management. In order to ensure smooth functioning of the business activities in a company, an effective bandwidth monitoring tool could greatly help in meeting this requisite.

With the advent of social networking and video streaming websites, there has been a surge in bandwidth usage patterns. This has been significant in the need for a Bandwidth Monitor, in order to ensure that business-critical applications get top priority. With a proper Bandwidth Monitoring tool, it becomes easy to pull out irrelevant applications and minimize the bandwidth usage for applications, that are not required to run on the business network. Here are some features of a bandwidth monitoring tool:

Traffic monitoringTraffic forensicsApplication mappingExtracting Top talkers informationTraffic reporting

Traffic could be monitored in a network with the help of a technology where information about bandwidth usage patterns could be derived by monitoring the flow in the network. With flow information, one could arrive at a lot of logical conclusions about the network and tune the extent of bandwidth monitoring.

Another important function of the tool is to drill down to drill down to the details of a particular interface alone for more information. This feature could be used to know about the utilization, volume, speed etc. This information is valuable in fine tuning the bandwidth usage patterns in the network.

Apart from these functions, identifying the top talkers on the network and generating traffic reports are additional functions of the bandwidth monitoring tool. These traffic reports give useful information over a period of time. This information helps in studying the traffic trends in the network which in turn helps in tuning the policies to achieve optimum bandwidth usage.

Apart from these features there are also some security features that come along with some Bandwidth Monitoring tools. These security features help in identifying potential network threats and attacks such as Denial of Service attacks, which could affect performance. These are precautionary measures to prevent lost business days and troubleshooting time.

Thus, we see that, a Bandwidth Monitoring tool comes with a lot of good features and it has become an essential part of Enterprise Networks. With businesses becoming increasingly dependent on networks and growing bandwidth constraints, it is not just an add-on but a mandatory tool to ensure an efficient network.

Sai Sundhar Padmanabhan is a Marketing Analyst for ManageEngine's Netflow ANalyzer which predominantly does bandwidth monitoring. Besides merely generating bandwidth profiles, it could also be used to a lot of other purposes like monitoring Cisco's Class Bases Quality of Service(CBQoS) policies. Service providers could use it for Billing purposes as well. More information is available in the Netflow Analyzer website.

http://www.manageengine.com/products/netflow/

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