10 Network Monitoring Challenges (And How to Deal With Them)

Every enterprise faces various network monitoring challenges. Tracking, monitoring, and improving network performance is a hard task. You need the right strategies, technologies, and employees for addressing your network performance issues. If you don’t have access to these things, then your business will face various network monitoring challenges.

You might be wondering about the common network monitoring challenges that your company might encounter. Also, how can you overcome these challenges? In this article, we are going to talk about 10 common network monitoring challenges that you might face. We will also share some possible solutions in this article.

Network monitoring challenges

1. Lack of network visibility

This is probably the most common network monitoring challenge. If you can’t see a portion of your network, then you can’t understand your network performance. Thus, it is important to ensure that the entire network is visible.

Network monitoring tools will automatically detect new devices that are connected to your network. This will ensure that every part of your network is visible. It will help you in learning about network performance issues. Also, you can easily find the cause of network performance issues. Thus, you should consider investing in a good network monitoring tool.

You also need to track and check every transaction that is happening in your network. One corrupt or bad device can cause a lot of trouble to your business. The best way to avoid this is by using good network monitoring tools. If you don’t have the expertise to use these tools, then you can work with MSPs like Bleuwire. They will help you in ensuring that your network is visible. Thus, you don’t need to worry about any blind spots in your network.

2. Establishing network performance baselines

You need to first set a baseline network performance before you can check your current network performance. Make sure that you are focusing on establishing network performance baselines first. This will ensure that you know about what your network performance is like without any issues.

This is very important for your business. If the network performance dips below the baseline, then you will know that there is some problem. Thus, you can focus on finding the root cause of the problem. You should also know when your network performance is actually doing better. This will help you in verifying the changes that you are doing.

If you are reconfiguring your network, then you need a way to test new changes. Thus, you need to define a network baseline. If your network is performing better after the new changes, then you can keep the changes. However, if your network is performing poorly after the new changes, then you can revert the changes.

3. Getting network performance reports

Old or traditional network monitoring tools can’t be used in today’s distributed network ecosystem. These tools don’t have the ability to check the entire network. They can’t keep up with the massive volumes of performance data generated by networks.

If you are using old monitoring solutions and tools, then you will only focus on the basic health and metrics of your network. This won’t help your networking teams. Your networking team needs to deal with a modern cloud-driven and distributed network ecosystem. Every network team wants the network to be more visible. This is the most important key to a good network monitoring strategy.

Network performance insights like network availability and link utilization can help you in testing your network. These performance insights are shown in the dashboard. This will help your network team in finding network issues in your network. They can quickly find issues in your network. Your network team can actually solve the network problem before customers or users find it.

4. Drawing network maps

If you want to effectively monitor your network, then you need to visualize your entire network. You need to check every connection and device that is present in your network. Almost every network monitoring tool will come with network mapping tools. These network mapping tools will draw a visual representation of your entire network. You can check all the devices that are connected to your network. This will ensure that you can check your entire enterprise network.

Effective network maps will help you in preventing dark areas from your network. Some monitoring tools will also provide different visuals based on your network performance metrics. This will help you in finding the red areas in your network. Also, you can easily check which devices are working fine. These visualizations will help your network admins easily understand the network performance.

You should ensure that your network monitoring tool can create a network map. There are also specific tools available in the market that can map your network. You should always have a copy of your entire network.

5. Balancing passive and active network monitoring

A good network monitoring strategy will include both passive and active performance monitoring. Active network monitoring simply means that you will observe your network performance data in real-time. This will ensure that your network is working fine in real-time.

In passive network monitoring, you will copy the network traffic for simulating the performance issues. This will help you in ensuring that your network will work properly under heavy traffic. Both network monitoring techniques are important for your business. However, you need to find the right balance between both strategies.

You should focus more on active network monitoring. It will ensure that your network is working properly in real-time. You can quickly fix the actual performance issues. Passive network monitoring will help you in finding issues that you can fix in the future. It is important if you are planning a big event. For example, if you have an e-commerce business then passive network monitoring is important before big events. This will ensure that your network will work properly during big events.

6. Avoiding downtimes and failures

Preventing network downtime, failures, and outages is the most important responsibility of a network administer. They need to keep track of CPU utilization, traffic latency, and bandwidth utilization. These are some key metrics that your team should monitor regularly.

However, the most important thing is that your team should receive information in advance about the network issues. If your network is facing issues like slowness and failure, then the network monitoring solution should inform your team. This is where old network monitoring solutions will fail.

Your network team can’t address the root cause of network failures until they have access to the correct data. Network monitoring tools should send them real-time notifications about network failures. This will ensure that your network engineer can act quickly. They will have enough time to analyze and solve the network problems before it affects your users.

7. Planning network growth

Your network is going to expand with time. You will add more users and customers to your network. Also, you will add more devices to your network. Thus, it is important to plan for the future. Most network teams only focus on how their network is performing now. However, you should also prepare yourself for the future.

If you are going to do some changes in your network, then you should consider it when you are planning out your network monitoring strategies. This will help you in creating the best network monitoring strategy. Your enterprise needs to project the future state of your network. You should have a rough idea about how many users you are going to add in a year. This will help you in estimating your future demands. It will also help you in assessing how additions to your network will affect your network performance.

8. Access to remote site insights

Businesses are generating a huge volume of data every day. You are probably monitoring multiple remote workforces, sites, and branches. Your network team needs to maintain and troubleshoot multiple sites. Also, you need to respond to different languages like Node.js, Python, C++, and C#.

It is not easy to handle different languages and locations from a centralized location. If you are using old network monitoring tools, then it will be impossible to manage your remote sites. Thus, you should first consider switching to the best network monitoring tools available in the market. This will ensure that your network team will have access to the best tool and data.

If one of your remote branches loses network connectivity, then your entire enterprise will be affected. Poor network performance will quickly lead to application failure. This will impact your mobile, site, and branch workforce productivity. Also, it will have a direct impact on your return on investment.

Network administrators should look for good network monitoring tools. These tools should go beyond the basic metrics. They should collect data from all the remote locations and present them in an easy format. This will help your team in quickly finding issues that are present in a remote location.

9. Security

Network security is another big challenge. If you have an office in remote locations, then they can’t be isolated from the external traffic. You should pay extra attention to every remote location. This can help you in avoiding serious security and data breaches. Most attackers will use phishing and social engineering attacks. Thus, your employees must be trained on data protection and privacy. They should know how to detect phishing emails.

You can also use better encryption methods, firewalls, and network monitoring tools for protecting your systems. Network monitoring tools can also help you in detecting security breaches. You can use multiple tools for increasing the security of your network. Try to look for solutions that can help you in balancing your network and security management.

Make sure that personal devices have access to limited company data. You should use multi-factor authorization techniques for protecting your network. Also, you should training to your employees. This will ensure that your employees know about basic security practices.

10. Configuration management

Most people are working remotely now. Thus, remote systems are connecting with the enterprise network. It is difficult to track all the connections. Also, it is very difficult to manage all these connections. You need to update your firewall rules. Make sure that your security policies are up to date.

If you are doing all these tasks manually, then you need to spend a lot of time. Thus, you should look for automated network solutions for solving this problem. There are various tools available in the market that can help you in keeping your configuration and security systems up to date.

You also need to install new devices in your network. Sometimes you need to repair your old devices. Thus, you should ensure that your network is still working properly. Sometimes new devices can disturb your network. If you are applying a new configuration, then you should first test. This will ensure that your new configuration won’t affect your network performance.

Good network monitoring tools will help you in checking the effect of new devices on your network. If your network performance is degrading due to a new configuration, then you can reset your network. This will help you in avoiding misconfiguration. You can assess all the configuration changes that you are making.

Conclusion

These are the most common network monitoring challenges that enterprises are facing. If you don’t have access to a large IT network team, then it will be difficult to solve this problem. Thus, you should consider working with a good MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in solving this problem. They have access to experienced IT professionals. Thus, you don’t need to worry about monitoring your network. Bleuwire will help you remotely monitor your network. They will ensure that your network is working properly. This will help you in reducing network outages. You can provide better services to your customers. If you need more information regarding IT networking services, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.