We’ve taken you across all areas of the network in our six-part series covering network troubleshooting solutions from the packet analyzer to the command line interface to the route-peering device. Throughout this series, the overarching message has been that network troubleshooting is a complex task and one that requires many different tools that come with various specialized capabilities. Select the wrong tool and you will struggle to identify and overcome your network challenges.
Now, let’s turn our attention to the final tool in this series: application performance monitoring (APM):
What it is: An APM allows managers to measure the performance of their applications across their networks to ensure that users continuously experience strong functionality. It recreates and monitors the user experience by making requests and then reporting how fast responses come back from remote resources.
What it’s good for: Just like a packet analyzer, this type of solution is great for reporting problems. It will allow you to collect data to determine whether there is an underlying network issue causing your applications to perform poorly.
What it’s bad for: Unfortunately, an APM will do little to help you determine where or why a problem is occurring. To find the cause, you will need to dig deeper into your network, applications, firewall and any other number of locations where errors can be lurking. This can be incredibly time-consuming, as it can take days to get to the root cause of an issue while your applications continue to suffer and productivity comes to a crawl.
So take our advice, and invest in TotalView from PathSolutions, which will scan your network in real time and report the exact cause and location of individual errors, along with plain English resolutions. You’ll be able to solve network problems in just 12 minutes, versus 12 or more hours.
