The Requirement To Monitor Network Activities

You need to monitor network traffic and other factors because a failure in the system can have serious consequences, such as the possible degradation of customer relationships and the irrecoverable loss of data. A system administrator (aka “sysadmin”) or network manager’s duty is that they are in charge of monitoring network factors to quickly detect failures or imminent failures of network components, including workstations, switches, servers, printers, and others. Any uptime problem could be easily resolved by the administrator just by installing a network monitor program. More advanced software can even be used to provide a broad range of checks that will automatically notify the network manager in case there is a failure in one of the vital network components.

The network monitor software can perform such checks through the use of TCP port checks, ICMP pings, SNMP, ARP, FTP, DNS, and HTTP protocol checks. This enables the administrator to watch over a broad range of network devices and hosts because the program automatically sends an email to the network administrators if a server, printer, or other device fails. By way of this arrangement, IT pros can act instantly and consequently greatly reduce down time.

The program for monitoring network conditions may also be helpful in detecting malware, such as computer viruses, Trojans, and even adware. This may be performed regularly by inspecting on the status of TCP ports that different applications sometimes depend on to run on their network computers and servers. Thus, if the software senses that one of these ports is open, it will send the manager an email or text message notifying him of the occurerence. The sysadmin can also monitor network conditions to determine the processes that are being executed on remote computers to find out if there are any dangerous programs installed.

Such a monitoring program may also function for checking the sort of applications that are being run by numerous users. Inspection can be done to ensure that employees are not using non-productive software (e.g. media players and computer games) during working hours. One more possible application of monitoring programs is that they are capable of keeping an eye on file sizes like the application logs and temp folders. You stand less risk of overcrowding the storage spaces for computers and servers just by monitoring either the remaining free space or the sizes of these files and folders.

The software used to monitor network conditions can also be used to check for any unauthorized users by keeping an eye on any MAC address modifications. The program can send a notice to the administrator in various forms such as an email message, a warning sound, a text message to his mobile phone, the display of a specific message on the screen or the execution of certain JavaScript and Visual Basic scripts. Programming the response of the software to specific events is possible just by shutting down or restarting a particular remote computer or service, or performing certain external programs.