What Can You Learn from Analyzing Network Performance Data?

The basic function of network performance monitoring (NPM) is examining for poor performance across your network so your network team can address it. Enterprises implement NPM tools in order to discover performance issues currently affecting their network. However, that’s only one of the uses of NPMs that companies can take advantage of. Monitoring your network can also reveal valuable insights that can help your network team understand why their network performs as it does. To do this, however, the network team needs to analyze their network performance data.

In order to determine the performance of your network, an NPM tool needs to be able to gather, examine, and generate reports on network data. Without this data analysis, the NPM can’t give your network team the wisdom it needs to proactively and intelligently keep their network running smoothly. To understand why network performance data analysis is important, we’ve outlined the basics of what examining network data can do for your enterprise.

Real-time and historical network performance data

NPMs can grab data from your network in real-time, but some can also store performance data to analyze later. Both of these data points are important, as they allow you to both understand current issues and historic performance. These two metrics allow network teams to perceive the basis behind their network’s performance rather than just knowing if their network is operating well or not.

Real-time data

Your network team needs to know about network issues as they happen, and NPMs need to collect performance data to do this. By analyzing this data, the network monitoring system will understand what’s causing the problem, where it came from, and how bad of an issue it is.

Historical data

There may be times where in order to understand a current threat to your network, the NPM needs to have a precedent incident for it. Keeping historical network performance data on hand helps your NPM quickly determine current network issues by comparing it to problems it’s previously detected.

Network performance reporting

In order for your network team to analyze performance data, your team needs to be able to review the data as well as insights the NPM tool has gathered on it. To that end, NPMs can generate network reports after it performs its analysis on data. The reports are a collection of the data the NPM has gathered as well as any important information about the data your network team needs to know. These reports summarize your network’s overall performance, and they are generated automatically in intervals determined by the network team.

Network performance trends

One of the best insights your company can learn from analyzing network data is performance trends. Performance-related events that occur multiple times on your network should always be made known to your network team. If an area of your network is constantly performing slowly during peak hours, for example, your enterprise can take steps to address the situation. Not all trends you’ll discover are strictly negative, though; your enterprise can also learn what areas of your network are doing fine, and therefore which areas you can leave alone.

Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitor vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying.

Check us out on Twitter for the latest in Network Monitoring news and developments!