The main objective of the system administrator is operating a computer park and maintenance of network equipment in working condition. And this problem is difficult to solve without the constant monitoring of hosts in the network.
Monitoring of hosts is usually in the periodic functional testing of certain services, ports and protocols. The most common method is sending special ICMP requests and wait for the response to them (ping). One of the critical parameters to be monitored is a response time of the device, it depends usually on the server uptime. It allows to estimate the load of the device and the communication channels. There are many ways of host monitoring, and their choice depends on the tasks performed by the device. For example, a web-server can be applied to verification of http-protocol.
What also helps the system administrator to use website monitoring and why you should use it on a regular basis:
1. Reduction of production costs in IT. Monitoring hosts minimizes the time required to identify the problem and, therefore, allows owners to save money.
2. Improved productivity of work. Automatic monitoring of hosts, as well as services and web application monitoring can deviate from the usual for someone manually verification of network device work. This allows the system administrators save time and spend it on more important issues, for example, to increase network performance, the introduction of new software to enhance information security companies, etc.
3. Increasing customer loyalty. Customers do not go away just because of a single negative experience with the service. Typically, a user rejects the use of services because of the constant disruption of service. It is therefore important to eliminate quickly not only big failure, but little downtime. Monitoring of the network hosts will improve system stability and increase “the percentage of trust” of your customers to you.
4. Planning of the network infrastructure upgrade to increase network bandwidth. With constant monitoring, using response time of the host, you can identify bottlenecks in the network, locate the faulty equipment and promptly replace it.
Summing up some, I would say that pre-emption, prevention, timely response to problems of network equipment can save time and hassle of employees and protects against loss of profits and customers.