Why You Need to Administer a Network Performance Analysis
Keeping track of your network’s performance at all times is essential for businesses. Using a network monitoring solution, network teams are able to observe how their network is behaving. They can find network performance issues and optimize their network operations. Another function of network performance monitoring (NPM) tools is allowing you to administer a network performance analysis.
A network performance analysis, as the name suggests, is the use of network data to unpack performance trends. By conducting a performance analysis, your IT team can understand why your network is performing the way it is. This analysis is an invaluable resource for network teams as it uncovers long-term or emerging network performance problems. Below, we discuss the benefits of a network performance analysis and why your enterprise needs to administer one.
Establishing and monitoring a network baseline
One of the most important part of network performance analysis is establishing a network baseline. A network baseline measures how your network performs on a regular basis – in essence, the typical behavior of your network without any dips or boosts in performance. By analyzing your network performance, you can determine this baseline and compare it continuously against current network behavior.
Performing an analysis for specific network metrics
Sometimes, you’ll want to know more specific information about your network performance. There are plenty of performance metrics that your network is able to analyze, such as bandwidth usage, throughput, packet loss, and latency. If your enterprise wants to examine your network for a specific metric, it can perform an analysis on your network to track that metric over time. This analysis can take both current data and historical data into account; therefore, if you want to see how your bandwidth usage has improved or gotten worse over time, you can track that using the same analysis.
Understanding the limits of your network performance
While it’s important to know your network’s average performance, you should also know what the upper limits of your network performance are. In other words, you want to know what your potential maximum network performance can be, and a network analysis can help you achieve that. You can also learn how close your network is to its limits; if your baseline performance is close to the maximum levels, you know that your network is fairly optimized.
The value of network performance data
Networks generate a ton of data every single day. Knowing the importance of this data and how to leverage it is an essential part of a network performance analysis. Logging and storing historical network data means that your IT team can examine the actual event of a performance issue by analyzing real data. Rather than trying to emulate this data, network teams can analyze what actually happened, which can give them insights that are more tailored to their network.
Looking for a solution to help you improve your network performance? 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.
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