Bandwidth Monitoring

Many bandwidth monitoring tools can tell you how much data is going in and out of your network; some of them can even tell you where on your network that traffic is going.  That’s great.

But why are you monitoring your bandwidth use? Does your connection to the Internet have a traffic cap that you’re trying to avoid? Are you trying to cut down on excessive usage or overage charges from your service provider? If your goal is actually to reduce your bandwidth use, finding out how much bandwidth you’re using is just the first step.  On a mixed-use network link like today’s corporate Internet connection, reducing your bandwidth use means getting to know the different kinds of traffic on the network and making an informed decision about what traffic to eliminate.  More sophisticated monitoring tools can help: With a more detailed picture of the different kinds of traffic on the network, you can focus on eliminating the unwanted traffic that is most significant on your network, without wasting time on applications that are not a significant problem.

There are several different kinds of monitoring tools: Web monitoring integrates with web proxies and filters, and focuses exclusively on web traffic, giving you a picture of the bandwidth that different web applications use. IP traffic monitoring tools integrate with routers and other network hardware, and look at how the traffic on your network breaks down into traditional network protocols, which gives you a high level picture of how much traffic there is in different categories (e.g. Web, E-mail, FTP, etc.) Application-aware monitoring combines the strengths of both of these, to give you a detailed breakdown of web applications like YouTube and Facebook as well as complex peer-to-peer applications like Skype and BitTorrent.

Vineyard Networks provides a variety of monitoring and reporting options, and can be offered as a cloud based solution or hosted onsite.  Request your free trial here!