What is Network Activity?

• Network Activity Definition

  Network Activity Definition

  Network activity is also known as network traffic flowing in and out. On a granular level, many activities repeatedly happen on each network-connected device in your IT infrastructure, including messages from network protocols, packet transmission, device status events, and more. Network activity monitoring helps identify bottlenecks impacting overall network performance, health, and uptime.
• Network activity monitoring

  Network activity monitoring

  Network activity monitoring is a process enabling IT administrators to track the slightest network activity in real-time. It helps IT administrators reduce downtime and mean time to resolve (MTTR) and directly impacts the overall network performance, health, and uptime. Network activity monitoring is crucial to identify and troubleshoot network bottlenecks when an issue is detected. Several monitoring tools can see network activities such as device status events, packet transmission, messages from network protocols, and so on.
• Network traffic monitoring

  Network traffic monitoring

  Network traffic refers to the movement of data to and fro within a network at a given point in time. Network data moving across the network can consist of data packets critical to your business. Network traffic can further be categorized into four broad categories known as:

  • Heavy traffic
  • Interactive traffic
  • Non-real-time traffic
  • Latency-sensitive traffic

  Network traffic monitoring identifies, reviews, analyzes, and manages network activities such as incoming and outgoing traffic to spot glitches or abnormalities causing network availability and performance issues. The key objective of network traffic monitoring is to gain insights into network traffic and the amount of data transmitted in a given time to ensure smooth operations.

  Benefits of Network Traffic Monitoring

  • Stay ahead of the outages: Network traffic monitoring is one of the simplest ways to prevent outages such as configuration issues, human errors, and more. It provides visibility into live network performance data and potential outages in the future, helping administrators identify and troubleshoot issues faster.
  • Fix issues faster: Whether you’re dealing with an abnormal traffic fluctuation or a configuration error, monitoring helps you locate the root cause of the issue. Monitoring software includes live mapping features and status windows, providing real-time performance metrics over time.
  • Manage growing, changing networks: With the increase in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as internet-enabled sensors and wireless devices, it’s becoming critical for businesses to monitor network devices continuously for significant fluctuations and suspicious activity. On the other hand, networks are growing in complexity and need flexible and reliable tools to help monitor all your IP assets in real-time and ensure smooth performance.
  • Identify security threats: Network monitoring tools provide first-level security against data breaches by detecting unusual spikes in traffic or an unfamiliar device connected to your network. Monitoring tools can help secure your business-critical data by allowing your admin team to take proactive measures.
  • Historical insights for equipment upgrade: Network traffic monitoring tools allow you to check the history of network-connected IT devices. It explains how equipment has performed over time to justify network upgrades. Many monitoring tools offer trend analysis to help determine whether your current technology can scale or not to meet business needs.
• How can network activity and traffic monitoring enhance network performance?

  How can network activity and traffic monitoring enhance network performance?

  • Visualizing and understanding networks better with hop-by-hop path analysis: Network monitoring tools offer hop-by-hop analysis to understand internal and external network performance, configuration details, and traffic. This method allows administrators to understand their networks better.
  • Generating and sharing network performance reports: Administrators can use monitoring tools to create reports using customized templates. These reports include several key performance parameters, such as interface availability, current interface, node, historical metrics, and more.
  • Quickly resolving network connectivity issues and reducing downtime: Improper network availability and connectivity problems create serious performance issues leading to downtime. Network diagnosis tools track and display current and historical performance metrics in easy-to-understand charts and dashboards. Teams can quickly compare data, identify problems, and optimize network performance.
• Network activity reporting, diagramming

  Network activity reporting, diagramming

  The network activity diagram shows sequential relationships between project activities using arrows and nodes, helping administrators to:

  • Show project workflow and interdependencies
  • Identify opportunities
  • Display project progress
  • Assist in planning, organizing, and controlling projects
  • Estimate the timeline of a project

  Network monitoring tools offer network activity reporting features to help teams detect, diagnose, and resolve network issues before they occur. With the help of these reports, administrators can track response time, availability, and uptime of routers. These tools include out-of-the-box dashboards, alerts, and expert guidance on what to monitor and how.