Network Performance Metrics: 5 Essential Network Metrics to Monitor

The monitoring of networks and IT infrastructures has become paramount with the digital transformation experienced in the business world. The network performance metrics you need to analyze to ensure that your organization’s network runs smoothly and evaluate your network performance also help your IT team to generate insights into solving problems in times of crisis.

Network monitoring involves both qualitative and quantitative means of observing and determining network behaviors and can provide real-time information about outages and errors, as well as potential problems in your network. In addition, network performance monitoring can help you create insights into your future workflows by making sense of end-user demands. To take full advantage of these features, you'll need an advanced network and IT infrastructure monitoring tool.

Network monitoring enables your IT team to make decisions based on data. This data enables you to build a business model promising high efficiency in infrastructure investment, network performance, and user demand parameters. Building the relevant structure requires monitoring basic network metrics that will help you determine your network performance accurately.

Monitoring the right metrics paves the way for more efficient results in terms of network and IT infrastructure performance. This makes it easier for your organization to make the right investment decisions in the long run and for teams in different departments to better understand the needs and expectations of users. On the other hand, it is mandatory to emphasize why it is important to monitor basic network metrics before implementing all these features within your organization.

Why Are Network Infrastructure Monitoring Metrics Important for Troubleshooting Network Problems?

Network performance metrics help distinguish between application problems and data transmission problems, enabling the determination of the problems more clearly for precise problem detection; therefore, teams can focus on workflows and it becomes easier to solve potential issues. This method of monitoring network traffic includes the metrics of round-trip time (RTT) and server response time (SRT).

RTT refers to the period for a data packet to reach its destination and the period to confirm the receipt of the packet. A TCP session needs to be created to calculate RTT. SRT is the time you need to complete and respond to a request.

Network performance monitoring offers three key benefits that enable you to improve overall network performance.

1. Network monitoring tools reveal full network visibility by enabling you to monitor every component of network traffic and all its dependents.
2. These tools are extremely successful in preventing service interruptions thanks to their real-time tracking features. Network monitoring metrics, which enable you to predict both potential and unexpected failures and outages, ensure the continuity of business with real-time monitoring.
3. These tools facilitate the monitoring of bandwidth, thereby providing you with the opportunity to intervene when bandwidth usage reaches critical levels, damaging the network flow. This helps you to provide uninterrupted service.

How to Measure Network Performance

Since IT infrastructures and networks are very complex systems, it is quite difficult to make manual measurements. Moreover, as network demands increase, it becomes imperative to create metrics to detect problems related to network performance. It should be noted that the lack of real-time provisioning is the most difficult aspect of manually measuring network performance. The lack of real-time provisioning can cause problems in certain features such as routing and bandwidth. In addition, when determining network performance manually, the collected data will be incomplete, making it very difficult to detect packet loss and situations that may cause an IT crisis in the long run such as delays.

Network performance monitoring tools and the key metrics you will monitor while using these tools enable you to obtain performance values that directly affect your business network. Network and IT infrastructure monitoring tools, which provide uninterrupted workflow through data analysis, enable you to respond to problems instantly thanks to instant reporting.

What are the Key Network Performance Metrics?

The following 5 key network metrics can help you monitor network performance and detect network problems in real-time.

1. Bandwidth usage: Bandwidth, which expresses the rate of maximum data transfer in the network within a certain period, is extremely important in terms of performing network operations with optimum efficiency, because you need to get the most out of your bandwidth without going over the limit. You can monitor the amount of bandwidth your network uses with a network performance monitoring tool. If you exceed the bandwidth threshold, such tools warn you via instant notifications.
2. Packet loss: Packet loss, which means the number of data packets lost during data transfer between two destinations, can adversely affect user services. Packet loss can occur due to router performance, software issues, and network congestion. TCP, the Transmission Control Protocol, can monitor lost data packets and ensure that they reach their destination.
3. Efficiency: Efficiency, also referred to as the throughput/time ratio, enables you to measure the data transfer rate of your network in different areas. This metric measures the real amount of data packets sent over the network to the destination, facilitating the detection of areas with throughput and retransmission of data packets in these areas.
4. Network availability: Network availability, which ensures the consistency of the service you provide to end-users, enables you to observe the uptime of your network within a certain period.
5. Connection: This metric allows you to check the connectivity between devices and nodes in your network. You can prevent service interruptions by detecting malfunctioning devices and nodes using the connection metric.

Monitor Real-Time Network Performance Metrics with Kron's Network Performance Monitoring

Our network and IT infrastructure monitoring solution Network Performance Monitoring (NPM), can track the metrics mentioned above in real-time for your organization. Kron NPM, which performs a detailed analysis of your network, helps you ensure business continuity by sending notifications without interruption or error, thanks to its instant warning and alarm management features. Network Performance Monitoring not only monitors your network with the different modules it offers but also enables you to make sense of the details obtained through monitoring and customize it based on the institution, team, or user.

To build an efficient IT network, it is quite important to detect errors before they occur and to intervene early, quickly and correctly in the event of an error. Kron NPM helps you build an efficient IT network and monitor your network performance in real-time, thanks to the five modules it involves. The modules of NPM are as follows:

• Auto Discovery: It enables IT managers to identify network assets to monitor.
• Performance Management: It enables you to monitor the performance of your network in real-time.
• Alarm and Warning Management: This module immediately notifies you of any error or interruption in the network.
• Configuration Management: This module, which automatically backs up the configuration files, reduces the potential downtime of the devices.
• Network Traffic Analysis: This module measures the speed, volume, and usage values of your network.

To take advantage of Kron NPM with its robust feature structure that easily monitors and instantly reports on 5 basic network and IT infrastructure monitoring metrics to build uninterrupted business processes. Contact us and get detailed information about our product from our expert team.