Active network monitoring is a technique where software agents, or hardware sensors, generate network traffic to verify that the infrastructure and applications are available and performing well. This type of monitoring is often called synthetic network monitoring, emphasizing that the traffic is intentionally generated for testing and measurement purposes.
Active tests report real-time data such as end-to-end latency, bandwidth, and web response time to improve network performance and user experience. One simple example of an active network monitoring test is the ping command. Ping sends packets to a remote host and reports how many were sent and received. When run from the command line, it prints the round-trip time for each response, marks any unreturned packets as lost, and summarizes total transmitted, received, and lost packets when the test completes.
$ ping www.google.com
PING www.google.com (74.125.29.105): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.125.29.105: icmp_seq=0 ttl=46 time=69.206 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.29.105: icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=208.630 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.29.105: icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=62.758 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.29.105: icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=307.980 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.29.105: icmp_seq=4 ttl=46 time=112.118 ms
--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 62.758/152.138/307.980/93.751 msHow Active Network Monitoring Works
Active network monitoring works by deploying dedicated sensors, or agents, that generate test traffic. The traffic generated measures metrics such as latency or packet loss. The agents also perform application tests such as web transactions or VoIP tests. This data enables active network monitoring tools to generate alerts when the performance of the network or application changes.
Key metrics
Synthetic traffic enable active network monitoring tools to report the following metrics:
- Latency
- Jitter
- Packet loss
- Mean Opinion Score (VoIP quality)
- Throughput
- DNS resolution time
- HTTP response time
A platform like NetBeez also supports the execution of custom scripts to extend the range of tests, thus measurements, available.
Differences between active and traditional monitoring
Traditional network monitoring tools, like the ones based on SNMP, regularly poll network devices and servers to gather their status and performance. This type of monitoring is essential for organizations to monitor the availability and performance of its infrastructure as it alerts IT teams when network nodes fail or have performance issues. However, traditional tools don’t capture what the users are experiencing primarily due to an increase in network complexity and adoption of cloud and SaaS applications.
For this reason, traditional tools are often considered “network centric” as they interact with the network hardware and software to gather an understanding of network status and performance. On the other end, active network monitoring tools are considered “user centric”. These tools generate traffic to mimic the users’ activity and understand the experience from the user perspective. Both tools are necessary and complementary as they address different functions.
Differences between active and passive monitoring
There’s a fundamental difference on how active and passive monitoring measure network performance:
- Active network monitoring generates test traffic,
- Passive network monitoring captures real user data traffic.
The two strategies are highly complementary and, together, they deliver a holistic view of the network. Their adoption an integration enable IT organizations to achieve high operational efficiency by reducing detection and troubleshooting time.
Active monitoring is best suited to identify bottlenecks and performance issues. By running continuous testing on the network, it provides early detection of network issues. However, it can’t report issues are caused by device failures or link saturation.
Passive monitoring provides in depth view of user traffic. It requires specialized hardware that captures and analyzes network traffic as it flows through the network. It is possible to inspect individual data packets, aggregate connections by senders or receivers, and identify usage patterns.
Passive monitoring is a fundamental tool for root cause analysis. However, it only covers traffic flowing within the perimeters of a private network infrastructure. Traffic flowing across public networks can’t be captured for analysis. For this reason, active monitoring is the only option to monitor cloud services.
Another limit of passive monitoring is that it generate large volumes of data over time. This compromises its data retention settings, requires more storage resources than active monitoring.
Comparison table between active monitoring and passive monitoring
| Feature | Active Monitoring | Passive Monitoring |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic Type | Synthetic | Real user traffic |
| Detects Outages | Yes | Sometimes |
| Root Cause Analysis | Limited | Strong |
| Impact on Network | Minimal | None |
| Best For | Proactive testing | Forensics |
Benefits of Active Network Monitoring
Active monitoring has many benefits, making it a critical approach for achieving full visibility. First, it provides quick detection of network outages and performance issues, almost in real-time. This proactive approach is possible thanks to continuous tests that alert as soon as a network or application is unavailable, or degraded. The interval between consecutive checks determines the sensitivity of the real time data.
Second, active monitoring data on network availability and performance enables the enforcement of service level agreements. Instead of relying on end users’ traffic to detect potential problems, service providers run synthetic tests to verify if they meet or not the SLAs established with their customers.
Third, active monitoring can also run application level tests, such as web transactions or VoIP calls. These tests enable to measure the user experience to web and SaaS application. Traditional network monitoring are unable to monitor SaaS. This renders active network monitoring a necessity for many organizations that must provide quality services to their users.
Lastly, active network monitoring can be as load testing run before turning networks and links live. Running pre-deployment tests can help identify bottlenecks and other network performance issues before networks go in production.
To conclude, active monitoring is essential for businesses that need to proactively identify blind spots and repair performance issues impacting their employees.
Common Active Monitoring Use Cases
The most common use cases for active network monitoring include:
- Cloud performance validation
- Remote workers network performance and support
- VoIP call quality assurance
- ISP performance verification (SLA)
Active Network Monitoring Tools
When evaluating active network monitoring tools, users should focus on features that enhance real-time visibility and predictive analytics. Here’s what to look in such a tool.
Distributed agents
The platform should support both hardware and software sensors to simplify the deployment to different network environments, from cloud networks, to remote branches. These distributed agents deliver end-to-end visibility across private, hybrid, and cloud environments.
Real-time alerts
The metrics are reported and processed in real-time to generate alerts when critical conditions arise. This automation enables the quick detection and resolution of network performance issues, bringing IT operational efficiency. Matched with AI insights, real-time visibility is an effective aid to reduce mean time to resolution.
Historical reporting
The network performance metrics are stored for historical reporting based on the data retention settings. Historical data enables baselining as well as predictive insights thanks to the discovery traffic trends.
API integrations
API enable integrating active monitoring with passive monitoring or security tools to have a full picture of network performance.
Low overhead deployment
Active monitoring tools should be easy to deploy, simple to use, and highly scalable. It’s also important to have deployment options for the service both on private and public clouds. A scalable solution ensures that it can easily scale as the network grows.
Conclusion
Active network monitoring is a vital technique that enables organizations to proactively assess and ensure the performance and availability of their network infrastructure and applications. By generating synthetic traffic and running continuous tests, active monitoring provides real-time insights into key metrics such as latency, packet loss, and application response times. This proactive approach helps identify potential issues before they impact users, supports service level agreement enforcement, and improves overall user experience.
While traditional and passive monitoring methods offer valuable perspectives by analyzing real user data and device status, active monitoring complements these approaches by simulating user behavior and testing network paths end-to-end, including cloud services that passive tools cannot fully cover. Together, active and passive monitoring deliver a comprehensive, holistic view of network health, enabling IT teams to quickly detect, diagnose, and fix problems, ultimately reducing downtime and optimizing network performance.
Choosing the right active network monitoring tools with features like distributed agents, real-time alerts, historical reporting, and API integrations can further enhance operational efficiency and scalability. In today’s complex and hybrid network environments, leveraging active network monitoring is essential for businesses aiming to maintain seamless connectivity, deliver personalized services, and stay ahead of potential network challenges.
NetBeez is an active network monitoring solution that uses distributed network sensors to continuously generate synthetic traffic and measure real-world performance from the user perspective. If you want to learn more about NetBeez, request a product tour or a free trial.
