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Networking Intermediate

What is Network Monitoring?

The practice of continuously observing network infrastructure to detect failures, performance degradation, and security threats.

Network monitoring tracks bandwidth utilization, packet loss, latency, device health, and security events across network infrastructure. Tools include Nagios, Zabbix, PRTG, and LibreNMS for infrastructure monitoring; Wireshark and tcpdump for packet analysis; NetFlow/sFlow for traffic analysis; and SNMP for device metrics. Modern monitoring systems use agents or agentless collection, define thresholds for alerts, generate performance reports, and support auto-remediation. Effective monitoring covers availability (is it up?), performance (is it fast?), and security (is it safe?) across all network layers.

Related Terms

DNS (Domain Name System)
A hierarchical naming system that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses.
Network ACL
A set of rules that control inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level, acting as a stateless firewall in cloud and enterprise networks.
WireGuard
A modern, lightweight VPN protocol that uses state-of-the-art cryptography and minimal code for fast, secure tunneling.
Traceroute
A network diagnostic tool that shows the path packets take from source to destination, listing each hop along the way.
Network Bridge
A device or software that connects two or more network segments at the data link layer, forwarding traffic based on MAC addresses.
Token Bucket Algorithm
A rate limiting algorithm that allows burst traffic by accumulating tokens at a fixed rate and consuming them per request.
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