Active passive network monitoring tools

Should your company use active or passive network monitoring in its performance management strategy? Two of the most common network monitoring techniques are active monitoring and passive monitoring. Looking for more info on network monitoring solutions and strategies?

The guide also features 10 questions you should ask prospective vendors and yourself before buying a network monitoring solution — allowing you to easily determine the best network monitoring tool for your needs.

You can check out that guide here! Active network monitoring, also known as synthetic network monitoring, releases test traffic onto the network and observes that traffic as it travels through. This traffic is not taken from actual transactions that occur on a network, but rather sent through the network in order for your monitoring solution to examine it on its path. Test traffic usually mimics the typical network traffic that flows through your system so your administrators will gain the most relevant insights to its network.

Image Credit: www. Iris Core Collect metrics from thousands of devices on networks and present data in an easy to read format. Iris Netflow Give engineers and managers the insights they need for stable and predictable networking environments. Iris AIOps Proactively detect problems through algorithmic correlation and clustering of alerts across your dev ecosystem. Iris Maps Powerful tool that generates visually detailed network reporting maps in real-time for quick data intake.

Iris Home Iris Home is a simple cost-effective way of understanding the network performance of your home network. View all modules. Search for:. This emulation occurs in real-time at set intervals, meaning your monitor will always be analyzing simulated performance data.

The major benefit of active monitoring is the ability to maintain complete visibility into your network. Thanks to real-time analysis, you can instantly eliminate blind spots by gaining info on performance everywhere on your network. Active monitors take a proactive approach to network troubleshooting by highlighting potential problem areas before it affects the end-user.

Active monitoring also helps in determining the performance of newly-integrated hardware. Most active monitors are configurable, allowing you to target specific areas of the network to watch over. You can see how new connections affect network performance and stop bottlenecks before they hit the end-user.

Active monitoring works best when analyzing a specific metric, but cannot cover every aspect of the network at once. It is also fairly resource-intensive because of the constant real-time data creation and analysis. Passive monitoring gathers actual user data and analyzes it over a specific period of time.

The monitor then studies the analysis and releases results to the monitor user. Instead, it pulls real user data from specific points in the network. Since it gathers actual user data, passive monitors inform you of issues that are directly affecting your users.

Rather than making changes based on active predictions, passive monitors alert you to end-user problems that need to be addressed immediately.