For email servers, a test message might be sent through SMTP and retrieved by IMAP or POP3.Ĭommonly measured metrics are response time, availability and uptime, although both consistency and reliability metrics are starting to gain popularity. While an intrusion detection system monitors a network threats from the outside, a network monitoring system monitors the network for problems caused by overloaded or crashed servers, network connections or other devices.įor example, to determine the status of a web server, monitoring software may periodically send an HTTP request to fetch a page. Network monitoring is part of network management. Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. For monitoring in the sense of surveillance, but the relying mostly on the same technology, see Computer and network surveillance.

This article is about monitoring for technical failures.

Network traffic monitoring tool