Specifications

Introduction 1-11

NAM / Traffic Analyzer v3.5 Tutorial

Introduction 1-11

NAM / Traffic Analyzer v3.5 Tutorial

Network Performance Monitoring

Business Metrics for Evaluating Performance

Network Performance Monitoring

Business Metrics for Evaluating Performance

• Response Time: The elapsed time between the end of a query on one end

of a conversation pair and the beginning of a response from the other end of

a pair. Latency, a function of response time, is any characteristic of a

network or system that increases the response time.

• Device or Interface Utilizations: The amount of

data moved successfully from one place to another

in a given a specified amount of bandwidth.

• Reliability: A measurement of the consistency of any

network, system or application in performing

according to its specifications.

• Network Utilization Patterns: Trending how the

network is being used, by protocols, users, and

how the patterns are changing.

Business Metric for Evaluating Performance

Measuring the health of the network is done typically using business performance metrics. These metrics

include, but are not limited to:

• Response Time: The elapsed time between the end of a query on one end of a conversation pair and

the beginning of a response from the other end of a pair. Latency is any characteristic of a network or

system that increases the response time.

• Reliability: A measurement of the consistency of any network, system or application in performing

according to its specifications.

• Utilization: The percentage of total bandwidth used for transporting data. Utilization is often

monitored on an ongoing basis for evaluating the usage of the network over time for capacity planning

purposes.

These metrics can be used to evaluate how well network, system, and application resources are performing,

and how these resources affect the delivery of network services both for present analysis and future

planning. Now let us look at some of the sources of data that is used to perform real time monitoring and

historical reporting functions.