Review of IP SLA* Monitor

Analyze Your Network's Performance with the IP SLA* Monitor

Find out what's happening between your computers and the routers on your network.  Discover bottlenecks, check round-trip times, and set alerts when traffic suddenly increases.  Guy's review of IP SLA monitor.

* SLA (Service Level Agreement)

• Learn About Your Router Traffic
• The Benefits of IP SLA Monitor
• Underlying Cisco IP SLA Technology
• Download your free copy of IP SLA Monitor

Learn About Your Router Traffic

SolarWinds IP SLA Monitor offers so much more than just discovering network bottlenecks, the real joy is learning about router traffic.  In the present era we accept that learning will be for life, yet sometimes it's hard, and expensive, to get started.  Enter the free IP SLA Monitor which will kick start your training by measuring key operations on your network.

Listening-in to the traffic on your network is rather like the government, or a phone company tapping into your conversations.  In both instances, the frequency, latency and bottlenecks are more interesting to a techie than mundane content of the traffic.

My point is that there is a lot happening on a computer network that not visible to an ordinary user.  The secret of routers' success is that they collect data about the network traffic.  Tools such as IP SLA Monitor, not only collect these data-about-data packets, but also analyse their contents to produce red / green warning lights, and response times in bar charts.  Download your free copy of IP SLA Monitor

The Benefits of IP SLA Monitor - Back to Basics

• This SolarWinds tool will help you troubleshoot network bottlenecks or computer to computer latency.
• IP SLA Monitor works by piggy-backing a ride on existing router messages.
• The skill of any such monitor is analyzing and displaying the data.
• The fun of learning with IP SLA Monitor is selecting the data most relevant to your network, for example, ping echo, DNS resolution times, or HTTP statistics.
• The result of a few hours of work / play is that you set alerts on key indicators and then get on with the rest of your job.
• When you get flagged with an alert you put your skills into practice and isolate the network problem.
• When you don't get flagged you revisit the tool to check that the thresholds are realistic.

Underlying Cisco IP SLA Technology

The ability to monitor network traffic all starts with NetFlow.  This is a UDP protocol that transmits reports about router activity.  The central component is the Cisco Network Services (CNS) with its NetFlow collection engine (NFC).  A key development is active monitoring, which generates network traffic in a continuous, reliable, and predictable manner, the result is that you can take the pulse of your network's performance and health.  As a result Cisco IP SLA turns the router into a network probe.

Guy's Law of the Free Utility

If you have a decent computer budget sooner or later you will head for the 'Big Brother' version of a free utility, in this case SolarWinds' Orion suite.  However, if you are short of cash, or just want to learn about network performance, then the free program is all that you need.  So, get IP SLA Monitor, and display the traffic on your routers. 

What I like about this system is that we paupers, or learners, get a well crafted utility, whose development is paid for by the rich.  Those who can afford the big brother utility with no restrictions on data history, number of servers monitored, or thresholds set, subsidise us until we are rich, or skilful enough to require the extra capabilities.  At which point we subsidise the next generation of beginners.

Summary - Review of IP SLA Monitor

SolarWinds IP SLA Monitor offers so much more than just discovering network bottlenecks, the real joy is learning about router traffic.  See how effortlessly this free monitor analyzes and displays the IP statistics.  The key to configuring this Monitor is selecting the data most relevant to your network, for example, ping echo, DNS resolution times, or HTTP statistics.  As a result of a few hours of investigation is that you can set alerts on key indicators, then get on with the rest of your job.  Download your free copy of IP SLA Monitor

More Help for Detecting Computer Bottlenecks

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