Network downtime is more than just frustrating. For many organizations, it’s financially devastating. In a recent report, most IT professionals reported that outages cost their business at least $100,000 per hour, with others reporting business impact as high as $1 million in hourly costs.
Network monitoring tools serve as a digital early warning system for IT teams and MSPs, illuminating every corner of the network ecosystem. Finding the right network monitoring tool means empowering your IT team with the critical insights into client network layout, performance, and alerts they need to address potential issues before they escalate into a crisis.
Whether you’re juggling on-premises infrastructure, cloud resources, or hybrid environments, the right network monitoring tool can be a game-changer in shifting your team’s stance from reactive to proactive problem-solving.
Key takeaways
- A network monitoring tool provides key visibility into network health, performance, and security, helping your IT team identify and resolve issues before they impact business operations.
- Your network monitoring toolkit should include specialized solutions, including performance monitoring for speed issues, availability monitoring for uptime challenges, and security monitoring for threat detection.
- Choosing the best network monitoring tools isn’t about finding a solution with the most features, it should be about finding the right fit for your IT environment, team capabilities, and overarching business objectives.
- Today, most network monitoring tools have evolved beyond traditional infrastructure to embracing cloud environments, making them essential components for hybrid IT landscapes.
- Some comprehensive RMM solutions include network monitoring functionality, such as topology mapping and real-time monitoring and alerts, creating a helpful alternative to a standalone network monitoring tool.
What is a network monitoring tool and how does it support IT teams?
A network monitoring tool is a specialized software application that monitors, analyzes, and reports on your network. These solutions continuously collect data from your network devices such as routers, managed switches, firewalls, and controllers, and transforms this data into actionable alerts and visualizations.
By leveraging network monitoring tools, IT teams can significantly reduce troubleshooting time and maintain consistent service response times. When trouble inevitably strikes, your team has all the contextual intelligence needed to pinpoint root causes and implement targeted solutions.
In addition to real-time monitoring, some networking monitoring tools track historical data, like configuration backups and traffic data, enabling teams to make informed decisions about capacity planning and infrastructure investments.
Types of network monitoring tools
Understanding the different types of network monitoring tools is essential for maintaining a secure, high-performance IT environment. Each tool type plays a unique role in ensuring operational stability and service continuity, from traffic analysis to performance metrics and cloud visibility.
Network performance monitoring tools
Network performance monitoring tools track critical metrics like latency, packet loss, throughput, jitter, and bandwidth across network segments. By establishing normal performance baselines and flagging deviations, these components spot bottlenecks or failing components before causing disruptions.
Why it matters
These solutions help IT teams detect network slowdowns early. Real-time monitoring using protocols like SNMP and flow data to assess network performance.
Who it’s for
Ideal for IT teams managing distributed networks that need greater visibility to maintain service levels and enable capacity planning.
Network availability monitoring tools
Availability monitoring tools confirm that critical devices, services, and applications are operational. They use a variety of accessibility tests to validate availability and uptime.
Why it matters
These tools ensure SLA compliance and uptime, with real-time alerting for outages and service degradation. Many also support monitoring and alerting on network events.
Who it’s for
IT teams responsible for business-critical services that need historical availability data and proactive monitoring to identify patterns in downtime.
Network traffic monitoring tools
Traffic monitoring tools analyze bandwidth usage, application behavior, geolocation insights, and traffic flows. These tools capture packet data and protocol information to map network utilization and traffic.
Why it matters
These tools perform extensive packet analysis and recognize applications at a granular level, so your team can precisely identify which applications, users, and/or protocols are consuming bandwidth.
Who it’s for
IT teams managing finite network resources and need insights to implement effective quality of service policies, identify unauthorized applications, and optimize traffic routing.
Network device and activity monitoring tools
Network device and activity monitoring tools help act as your network’s guardians—monitoring for changes and alerting you to potential issues across your networks. These tools allow you to customize alerting, review system logs for further analysis, and support network security monitoring practices.
Why it matters
These feature alerts and monitoring features that support incident response efforts.
Who it’s for
IT and security teams protecting sensitive or regulated environments, where early detection of intrusions or exploits is mission-critical.
Network configuration monitoring tools
Configuration monitoring tools track and verify the settings of every device and infrastructure component, helping to maintain a detailed record of device configurations, detect unauthorized changes, and ensure that any configurations remain compliant with established policies.
Why it matters
Maintaining configuration integrity reduces downtime and enhances security. These tools support change management, audit trails, and policy enforcement.
Who it’s for
Organizations with compliance mandates or complex networks that demand consistent configuration oversight and risk mitigation.
How to choose the right network monitoring tools
When exploring the best network monitoring tools for your organization, look for a solution that will complement your team’s capabilities and integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack.
Some common features to look for include:
- Comprehensive network visibility across all devices, endpoints, and traffic sources.
- Automated network topography mapping for a real-time view of device connectivity, and dependencies.
- Scalability to support growing environments and additional endpoints
- IT asset discovery and auto-configuration capabilities
- Customizable alert thresholds to match your operational needs
- Integration with existing IT service management tools
- Real-time monitoring and intelligent alerting for faster incident response
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics to generate actionable insights and performance trends
Remember: the best network monitoring tool isn’t the one with the longest feature list, but the one that addresses your unique challenges and needs. Download our Guide to Network Monitoring and Management for more information to consider as you evolve your network monitoring and management capabilities.
Leveraging RMM software for network monitoring
IT teams managing robust IT environments may find that onboarding a specialized network monitoring software can add another layer of complexity to an already fragmented IT infrastructure. The good news is that many of today’s modern remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions come equipped with built-in network monitoring capabilities to address these challenges, and more. This makes RMM a viable solution for IT teams looking to streamline operations and reduce tool sprawl.
Integrating network monitoring into your RMM software offers several key benefits:
- Real-time network visibility across endpoints, devices, and traffic
- Centralized alerting and reporting to support proactive issue resolution
- Automation-powered workflows to reduce manual tasks and detect issues faster
- Unified IT management that consolidates infrastructure, endpoint, and network oversight into one solution
By leveraging RMM software with native network monitoring features, IT professionals can simplify their tech stack, improve response times, and boost operational efficiency.
Smarter network monitoring starts with ConnectWise RMM
The most effective network monitoring tools deliver contextual intelligence needed to move from reactive support to proactive problem-solving.
As IT environments evolve, the ability to proactively monitor, manage and secure the network becomes more challenging—but more critical. Selecting a network monitoring solution that supports future scalability and visibility is key to long-term IT success.
If a standalone network monitoring tool is too costly or complex for your business needs, consider a comprehensive solution like ConnectWise RMM. Through strategic partnership with Auvik we provide powerful network monitoring features, including configuration backup comparison and history, out-of-the-box alerts, live topology mapping, traffic insights, and much more. Combined, these features can help consolidate network monitoring workflows with holistic IT management, enabling more proactive support and providing a more comprehensive view of performance.
Ready to revolutionize your IT operations with a more comprehensive network monitoring solution? Watch an on-demand demo to see how our award-winning RMM software can unlock more effective network monitoring and management—and more—for your business.
