After revolutionizing desktop software and server software, the latest success of open source technology is open source network monitoring software. As networks are getting larger, more complex and more heterogeneous, constant monitoring is imperative to minimize their downtime.
Open source software is gaining ground in supervising network infrastructure, and detecting, diagnosing and resolving performance issues of the network.

Small to medium sized businesses can seldom afford the conventional network monitoring software available on the market today. With these expensive commercial solutions, not only is the upfront cost prohibitive, but the costs associated with licensing, upgrading and supporting proprietary software are beyond the reach of most small businesses. Though there are cheaper options available, most of those are disparate tools rather than comprehensive network monitoring solutions. These tend to be incomplete solutions to your needs, leaving you open to risk. For these reasons and more, many companies are now turning to open source software to meet their network monitoring needs.

Below is a small sample of the open source network monitoring tools available today

Nagios offers a complete monitoring and alerting solution, and its wealth of features are considered to be unmatched by any tool out in the market.
OpenNMS, one of the oldest network management systems, is an enterprise-level platform that is highly scalable, customizable and flexible.
Observium is an autodiscovering network monitoring tool with a navigable interface geared towards Linux, BSD and Cisco networks.
Munin is a network resource monitoring tool that can analyze resource trends, monitor and graph performance metrics. It also makes it easy to see how you’re doing capacity-wise on any resource.
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution, which is similar to Munin in many ways.
Collectd collects network performance statistics periodically, also focuses on graphing the collected metrics. Since it is designed for low-system resource use, it excels on most systems without interfering with other network processes.

Another commonly used, free open source network monitoring utility is Monit. It is made for the UNIX system, and just like the operating system, is GNU for anyone to use. Monit can be used to monitor files, filesystems on localhost, or to check network connections on different servers, either on localhost or on remote hosts.
Zabbix is a scalable performance monitoring solution, which has great visualization support including zooming and mapping.
Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system for high-performance networks, which makes it easy to keep an eye on an entire cluster of machines.
Argus is a versatile network monitoring application with a clean, easy-to-view web interface.

In addition to their availability and affordability, open source network monitoring software have other features that are attractive. Companies are now able to leverage other open source network management tools and integrate several open source solutions into one framework. Open source solutions are also much more adaptable and scalable than proprietary platforms. In addition, just like other open source products, open source network monitoring software also tends to have strong communities and active forums dedicated to bettering the code and fixing bugs as they are reported.

The detection, diagnosis and resolution of performance issues within a network is collectively referred to as network performance monitoring. Increasing size, complexity and diversity of networks make them a challenge to manage. Carefully observing the behavior of a network, monitoring network traffic and resource utilization and optimizing data flow are crucial to the successful functioning of the network.

Monitoring a networks performance is an integral part of maintenance of the network. Through monitoring, vital performance data can be obtained, which is useful in identifying network problems and in the planning for changing demand for network resources. Proactive network monitoring is a vital function that can save money in network downtime, meet compliance requirements and get rid of internal security threats. It can help avoid infrastructure cost overruns and highlight potential cost savings by finding redundant resources. It can also identify weak links, bottlenecks and overloaded equipment before they bring down a network entirely.

Regular performance monitoring ensures that there is always up-to-date information about how the network is operating. Ideally, performance information for the network is recorded over a range of conditions, so that averages and benchmarks can be defined. Data that represents satisfactory performance of the network under its normal working conditions, aids in recognizing problems when or even before they occur. When problems do occur, the data collected provides information about the performance of network components during the crisis, which is useful in identifying the root of the problem. Monitoring network performance also supplies data to project future growth and to plan for changes in your network requirements. Performance data includes metrics such as accurate end-to-end response time, availability and uptime, incorrect routing or routing issues, consistency and reliability.

The performance of every component of a network has an impact on the performance of the network. The network is monitored for problems caused by overloaded components, slow or failing components or flawed components of the network. By analyzing the performance of each component of the network, performance of the network can be optimized. Factors affecting network performance include latency or lag, round-trip time, packet loss, arrival rate, retransmission, throughput, compression, encryption and concurrency.

Network performance monitoring can be achieved using a combination of plug-and-play hardware and software solutions. The tools vary by size, platform, complexity, specific focus and ease of use. Depending on the chosen solution, the cost of network monitoring varies. Open source tools are available which usually cost nothing. At the other end of the spectrum are commercial solutions, which are quite expensive. Another option is the companies to whom you can outsource that provide various monitoring and management services.

There are innovations in network monitoring services every day. Enhanced solutions now available offer real-time views and dashboards that enable visual tracking of network performance at a glance. Lately, network monitoring services also usually have multiple servers in different geographic locations to paint a more complete picture on network availability. With every improvement, network performance monitoring is moving closer to becoming part of a much larger process of business monitoring.

Network monitoring is very essential for companies and small business to have control over the functionality of several workstations. The delivery of a service will be largely based on the condition of the network that handles the operation. With the use of special software applications, companies can monitor the performance of each network from anywhere in the world. With the popularity of cloud based computing or the virtual private server services, the need for a fool proof network is increasing rapidly.

There are many aspects of a network that needs monitoring. Some of them are elaborated as follows.

Monitoring of the performance

Performance of a network should be monitored from time to time, in order to avoid server crashes. Synthetic monitoring, real user monitoring and web logs can be used to understand the performance of the website.

Notifying about network errors

One of the highlights of using monitoring tools is that any hiccups in the network or reports on system failure, will be alerted to the clients through various means of communication. The preloaded solutions that are loaded on to the system will provide scope for self healing of the errors. This will enable the users to experience error free services at all times.

Troubleshooting and resolving the network issue

Through the support of remote connectivity to the servers, monitoring tools can troubleshoot network issues with ease. These tools also automate the fault remediation in order to correct various flaws in the system.

Network mapping

Networking mapping facility allows the client to oversee the network diagram in order to check for networking bottlenecks affecting the server. This will allow the firm to make use of the right tools in order to increase the networks functionality.

Customization

Networking tools can be customized in order to increase the effectiveness of the operations. It is important to make use of the right kind of tools by observing the functionalities of each entity in network management software. By making use of additional plug-ins or add-ons, one can clearly increase the productivity to a great deal.

Network monitoring tools are used to check for any errors in the system using FTP, HTTP, POP3 and SMTP. These will also keep a check on the content that is transferred via the network. Any glitches related to slow response time, downtime or uptime, will be reported to the client with the help of network performance reports that can be utilized to assess the needs of the network.

Data leakage or unnecessary usage of bandwidth can be controlled with the use of these tools. The alerts sent to the central administrating teams will help them to take actions. Any loopholes in the network can be corrected before it gets to the end users. Unauthorized file transfer or data theft can be monitored to a great extent with the help of monitoring tools. Network monitoring tools are a great asset for companies to restrict any unauthorized activity to take place on the network.

A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) appliance is a device that has a built-in operating system and essential software to manage network parameters, protocols and components. It is important that the computers which are connected to a network environment are configured, without which they will not be able to talk to each other.

DHCP appliances in most cases have open source operating systems preinstalled along with related software, usually web based. The intuitive graphic user interface makes the task of managing, configuring and allocating IP addresses a hassle free task. It prevents duplication of resources, eliminates ghost records and also provides other information such as local caching DNS resolvers, network boot servers etc.

It also provides a database of devices that are connected to the network. DHCP is used for IPv4 as well as IPv6.

DNS is a network function which converts human readable names to machine coded IP addresses.

DNS appliances can be integrated into any existing network. It is typically utilized to reduce the burden of administrators, who don’t have to master native commands which are complex in nature. The hardware and software of such appliances are preconfigured. The user simply has to plug-in the device and through web based GUI select the components that need to be active.

Such an interface also allows the administrator to allocate various resources efficiently. Managing various core components of such a network is easy; because most of the systems are controlled via the interface. These appliances can be operated remotely after the environment is created.

DNS appliances management offers reliable and efficient way to maintain and track all your core network services such as IP address, DNS and DHCP infrastructure. It provides a central management interface which makes the task of administering network parameters and components an easy job.

If you just bought your new copy of windows and are eager towards using your new computer, then I guess when installing different software you would often be confronted with some pop up messages that involves your firewall.

What is a firewall?

When we’re talking about a network firewall, then we are talking about something that protects your connection from other users that might be able to use it without encryption or password. Because wireless routers usually have only one IP address and it is impossible to be able to directly connect the wireless clients using the Network Address Translation process (shortly put, NAT) you can refer to your wireless router as a firewall. Thus there are many wireless routers out there which have port or application specific firewall capabilities, and again, they can also be referred to as firewalls.

How to disable a wireless router firewall in windows

1. The first thing you might want to make sure of is to log in as the administrator of your computer and have all the router firewalls disabled. There is no administration interface blueprint and they all differ according to manufacturers and also model. It is also possible that your router might not contain any firewall options. But if it does have, make sure that you go to that section and render the firewall unchecked.
2. Now you will have to forward a port. This is required if an external PC is being declined the access of connecting to the internal client.
3. At this step you will need to have knowledge of your internal IP address.
4. Now, just go to “Start”, then click “Run” and write in the new console “cmd”. After the operation is executed you will have to write “ipconfig” and then press “Enter” once again. Then carefully check the information that has appeared and locate your IP address.
5. If you don’t have any idea about the port that has to be forwarded you can check your software’s documentation.
6. Now you will need to start your router’s administration console.
7. Find a tab named “Port forwarding” or any other tab that resembles that. Again, this section’s name will be different and it depends on the model of your router and the manufacturer.
8. Now you will be required to add the corresponding port and then have your IP address forwarded. If you will decide to change your IP address in the future, you will have to repeat this process again. Also, if you have a dynamic IP address thus it changes a lot, you can ask your ISP to provide you with a public IP.

If you have troubles and didn’t quite solve your problem, make sure that you follow the steps clearly and thoroughly. You may be surprised on how much can a single overlooking of a detail mean when you’re dealing with computer things. If you think that you cannot handle this on your own, you can try asking at online forums.

If you just decided that you are well prepared to go for the best prize there is in computer networking field, then you are definitely thinking about CCIE. But doing this on your own is not an easy task to achieve. You will need to have someone who has already gone through it and know its ins and outs very well.

It’s not as easy as some might consider, and it’s not like you are deciding whether to go fishing today or not. Things are just different with CCIE. If you curious on what you need for this certification then reading this article will give you all the tips you need. The path for CCIE is usually first CCNA, then CCNP and finally CCIE.

The 3 Requirements to Crack CCIE

Proven Success

For some, reputation may not come as very useful in their daily lives. But you can’t say the same thing about CCIE training vendors. That’s why if you are interested in contracting the services of such a vendor, you will first have to go online and do a lot of research to find out as much as you can about that provider. You will not want to stick with a vendor with a bad reputation that can affect your business and drive you crazy in the process.

Nowadays many vendors say that they can bring the world at your feet, offer flashy advertisements and say anything to convince you in signing a deal with them. But don’t believe in all that hype. Ask your friends, your family, and go online and read what other users have to say about them. This is the best method that’s been practiced for a long time by many people in search of information regarding their interest.

Quality of Training Material

You should know that when you’re talking about CCIE, you’re talking about something very hard. Quality material in order to train potential CCIE is something even harder to achieve. That’s why an in-depth understanding is imperative when it comes to writing quality material. But there are also other things that can come in between this, like the assigned person’s ethics and the budget he or she is working under.

Even though you may be dealing with expert CCIE, if communication can’t be established you will not benefit from this. There are some cases when grammatical mistakes or other types of troubles may come up from the CCIE that will change the meaning of their explanations and reasoning when it comes to your training, and because of this you will not be helped that much. The product they have to deliver must be free of such mistake and it has to come in a perfect condition.

Real CCIE support

If given the case you will have any doubts, questions about the material you just acquired, the support must be actively involved in your problem and provide you with feedback as soon as possible. There are vendors that claim they offer good support, but is that true? I don’t know, you will have to find that out on your own. Make sure they have contact details and feel free to put their customer support to the test. This way you will see how reliable they are.

In computer networking, you will come across terms such as broadcasting and broadcast network. This article aims at providing you information such as what a broadcast network is, how it’s done and a brief introduction to multi casting.

What is A Broadcast Network?

Have you ever heard of TV broadcasting? What does that mean? A TV program is broadcasted which means it’s send to everyone who has permission to receive and watch the program. Similarly, in a broadcast network, messages are sent and those messages are received by all computers in the network.

How A Broadcast Network Works?

The messages, termed as packets according to networking terminology, travel across the single shared medium for communication and are received by all computers. These messages will have address information regarding the intended recipient.

Each computer, as it receives these packets, will analyze them and find out if it’s meant for them. If not, they simply ignore these packets. If they are the intended recipient, the packet is processed.

This method can be applied in the following ways

1. A packet sent to a single computer
2. A packet sent to all computers in the network
3. A packet sent to a select subgroup computers in a network

We discussed how broadcast network works for a single computer. For all computers in the network, the only difference is that, instead of one computer processing the packet, all computers will process the packet. This method is called broadcasting.

The third method is sending the packet to a subgroup in a network. The subgroup can have 2 or more computers and each computer maybe part of any number of sub groups. This is called multi-casting.

The first bit is reserved to indicate multi casting in a packet and the remaining n-1 bit in the address field is used to indicate the group to which the packet is to be sent.

What is a Point-To-Point Network?

A point-to-point network, compared to a broadcast network has many connections between computers. Often times, for a message to reach its destination, it has to traverse a number of intermediate computers. It’s kind of like a hierarchy like if you need to reach the president, you have to go through a number of other officials.

We use broadcast networks for geographically small networks and point-to-point networks for larger networks. In case of point-to-point networks, routing algorithms play a major role in deciding the routes that the packet must take in order to reach the destination in minimum amount of time.

I have been online for about 6 years now and I have tried out many different web hosts during this time.

In this article I am going to review Hostgator shared web hosting plan. I dont know how their VPS plans are or how their dedicated servers fare.

Hostgator is pretty much one of the most popular and professional web hosting companies out there. I have hosted with HostGator, StableHost, eWebGuru, SharkSpace (Now Eleven2), Bluehost and HostMonster.

So this review of HostGator is based on my experience with them and comparing them with other shared web hosting companies.

Let me get straight to the point without all the technical stuff. HostGator rocks!!! I mean, they are not the perfect web hosting company you would want. However, I am yet to find that “perfect” company in the economy range. Sure there maybe some companies like RackSpace which are totally awesome. But, you need to understand the price difference here.

What I like about Hostgator

• Stable hosting. My site hasn’t crashed ever while I hosted it with them
• They value their customers. I once had an issue with the customer rep giving me wrong information. When I reached out to them, they gave me the correct information and even gave me an additional discount for their mistake
• Quick response. While they are not as quick as SharkSpace, they are damn fast. Sometimes I get replies within 3 minutes of raising an issue
• Doesn’t overload their servers with huge number of websites
• Experienced and knowledgeable technical staff
• Affordable pricing. While they might not be the cheapest, they do offer the best value for money in my experience

What I do not like about Hostgator hosting

There is only one thing I do not like about them. They oversell. While it is true that they do not overload their servers, they definitely oversell.

Overselling means, they promise something that is unrealistic. One example is that they provide unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space. How do you think anyone can give unlimited disk space? There should be a limit to how much they can provide a customer.

It’s usually a marketing technique and based on the assumption that people do not utilize more than a certain expected amount of disk space and bandwidth. Most people never use more than 100MB of disk space or 1 GB of bandwidth.

So is there any catch? Yes. Just like any hosting company, they do have a fair usage policy. If you utilize above a certain threshold, they will shut down your site. Now. Don’t panic. The threshold is usually very high and most people never reach there.

There are cases where you get a flood of traffic to your site when your site hits the front page of DIGG or something similar. In those cases, they might shutdown your site temporarily. If it happens too often, they will shut down your account.

In my opinion, a normal site owner needn’t worry about these things. Since heavy traffic is usually associated with site popularity. The more popular your site, the more money normally it brings in. Hence, you can afford to pay for more expensive hosting.

Conclusion of This Web Hosting Review

I’d definitely recommend you go ahead and get yourself a hostgator hosting. In case you need help with setting up your hosting, you can always contact me and I will help you out. No strings attached.

I have been online for about 6 years now and I have tried out many different web hosts during this time.

If you have a network you just finish setting up and have everything working fine, I guess that there is also something more that is missing. Are you able to tell what?

Why do you need network consultants?

You will need the help and expertise of a network consultant for many reasons. Also, organizations and companies need the services of these guys, too, so don’t think even for a second that you are the only one contracting their services. So the reason you need them is because there may be times when your personal team will not be in its top shape or members will be missing out that day, just when you need some good assistance.

Basically, network consultants are that missing staff that you need so much to have everything running up nice and smooth. It doesn’t matter what are the reasons, what’s important is that when you choose the services of such consultants, to make sure it’s a wise decision that you are taking. You can read on and find out what steps are there required in order to hire a network consultant.

Steps in choosing a network consultant

1. First you would want to have a diagram of your network made. As a tool for this job you can use Visio which is available for Windows or if you don’t need such software, you can draw it on your own. I personally recommend Visio for it is a nice tool which serves as good documentation
2. Have your tasks, needs and also your business plan listed. Make sure that you make clear what the objectives you need to achieve are
3. Keep track of your records and determine the starting date of the project and the estimated time of completion and also the price for your network consultants (wage or pay)
4. Meeting up with at least three consulting companies to have your project presented and discussed thoroughly can offer you different vision on it and also different pricings and time frames when it comes to completing it. If by chance you know some companies which are regularly using network consultants go ahead and asked them to provide you with referrals. Make sure to ask key questions, questions you really are interested in, like the estimated time of completion, how many similar projects they have completed, how long are they doing business for and also a time when you will be expecting their proposal
5. Now you need to get a list of references from the network consultants. Then call those companies and ask them about the quality of the consultants that have been offering their services to them
6. Last but not least, it’s vital to mind all factors when you are about to make such a decision. Carefully check every proposal and the estimated time of completion and also the cost of it. Make sure that after you finish the deal with the consultant, there is a team waiting for you to take it from there

It’s pretty difficult to choose a web hosting company these days. The reason is that there are numerous web hosts that are over crowding the market.

My criteria for choosing a web host is rather simple

1. They must provide reliable support
2. They shouldn’t shut down my site just because I got a traffic spike
3. Should value their customers
4. Shouldn’t go out of business and take my site with them
5. Have very good uptime

There are many web hosts satisfying this criteria. One that comes to my mind often is Hostgator. You can checkout hostgator to see if they are a good fit for your site.

They have been great in terms of support, reliability and uptime. I would certainly recommend them for your web hosting needs.