Networks are similar to bi-directional streets with fast-moving vehicles travelling toward their respective destinations. How quickly and smoothly destinations are reached, depends on the quality of the road, traffic density and how vehicles navigate their respective paths. In many instances, traffic officers are required to step in – to alleviate congestion issues caused by fender benders, breakdowns and other incidents that re-direct traffic – to get things moving along with minimal disturbance to traffic flow.

Routers, just like traffic officers, ensure that network traffic flows smoothly to reach their predetermined destinations. Sometimes, even routers need assistance to prevent becoming overwhelmed by large traffic volumes. Router monitoring software allows IT departments to keep a check on the flow of network traffic, to analyse the performance of routers and step in when problems arise.

Business and home users alike are becoming ever more reliant on the web. It is used for entertained, to communicate, conduct transactions or socialise. With this comes the need for IT departments and service providers to invest in more sophisticated router monitoring software. Router monitoring software not only provides alerts and notifications, but IT departments can also use it to collect information over extended periods to analyse network trends, monitor the performance of routers and make other useful assessments using metrics acquired from routers.

Here are a few questions router monitoring software will answer around bandwidth issues:

• Is the router responsible? Often times failing routers will cause network instability by intermittently dropping connections. Faulty routers can cause a significant slowdown in network speeds, causing major bottlenecks to occur on your network. Router monitoring software will alert IT about the symptoms well in advance and allow them to take corrective steps.

• Do we just need more bandwidth? Router monitoring software allows you to analyse the traffic flowing through your environment. This gives great insight to whether you need to spend more on bandwidth. It might just be that your current product no longer facilitates your business needs. The fast-changing nature of networks require IT to constantly evaluate the efficiency of services.

• How is bandwidth being consumed? Understanding how bandwidth is utilised means you can put measures in place that will optimise it. Applications may consume excessive bandwidth and have negative effects for the business. Users may be using time less productively on video on demand, gaming or social network sites. Router monitoring software gives you the insight to usage trends and makes it easier to spot bottlenecks and other causes of network congestion.

Router monitoring software makes your network safe 

Security risks don’t always come from external sources. Understanding the internal traffic flow will assist in identifying potential security risks in your environment. Enterprises and service providers contend with massive quantities of traffic and need to grapple with how to analyse large amounts of data daily. The administrative burden is lightened for busy IT departments that may otherwise have missed critical events, if not for the powerful monitoring and reporting functions offered by router monitoring software.

Image credit: Pixabay

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