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About Network Management

In today's connected world, real-world usage of computing revolves around the concept of networking, and thorough network management is extremely important. It is therefore somewhat surprising to discover that so many businesses and organizations fail to spend a reasonable amount of time and money to set up some kind of reliable and useful network management.

The obvious (yet often overlooked) fact is that without a reliable network, there can be no reliable networking! Yet details of what the network is doing, how it is performing and where the problematic areas are, is often simply not available.

Why would you implement raid-technology, server clustering, fail-over systems and use other fault-tolerant and redundant equipment and yet still tolerate complete invisibility of possibly the most important (in terms of need for availability) computer on the network (the network itself).

The importance of a business's network is often overlooked or dismissed as "simply there", yet the critical nature and growing importance of LANs in a business organization make it obvious why network management is absolutely vital, and cannot be omitted or neglected!

Possibly one of the reasons for the small number of network management applications in use is the unfamiliarity with the network management approach, and the complexity of many suitable applications in general.

• Using a network management solution allows you to track the performance of your network and quickly identify problems before they affect your users.
• Network downtime can affect your business and its productivity.
• Reactive network management does reduce downtime by responding to device and link failures. Proactive network management however enables you to detect potential problems before they actually occur which reduces the number and severity of failures and can help reduce downtime.
• Network topology and monitoring information give you the necessary accurate view of your network's structure and traffic rates, which enables you improving overall network performance.
• Network management enables you to make better use of current equipment, delaying expensive upgrades.