Benefits of Using SNMP for Network Monitoring with FrameFlow

Benefits of Deploying SNMP for Network Monitoring with FrameFlow

With the growing proliferation of connected devices and IT systems across all manner of business operations, which is expected to accelerate through the 2020s, and our increasing reliance on their performance and stability, monitoring the health of your networks has gone from essential to critical.

But what if you have a large volume of many different kinds of devices on your network, each offering its own proprietary type of performance monitoring, if any at all?

Keeping track of all your systems, adding new ones to the network, and continuously analyzing their performance across the board can be daunting. This is where SNMP monitoring by FrameFlow can offer significant value to your organization, and especial to those individuals and teams tasked with keeping your networks flowing smoothly and effectively.

Our Increasing Interconnected World

According to a recent article published by Statistica, estimates for the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices out there currently in use are upwards of 20 billion. "Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world…." Much of this focus of has been on the consumer market for items like smart phones, electronic devices and household appliances.

However, with the sheer size of the industrial products sector in areas like supply chain management, smart buildings and a nearly unlimited host of possible networked applications, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is "set to dwarf the size of the consumer IoT by several magnitudes." -PWC

SNMP Monitoring that Can Handle Networks with Many Nodes

Managing and maintaining the networks required to support these devices is no small feat. Fortunately, there is a well-established protocol, SNMP, that we’ve leveraged at FrameFlow to easily and efficiently manage networks with tens of thousands of connected devices, all in one install and monitored within one unified dashboard.

SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. It was created in the late 1980s as a standard means to monitor and manage network equipment from different vendors. Despite having the word, "simple," in its name, SNMP has a reputation for being difficult to use partly due to its reliance on obscure technical terms, specific to the protocol like: OID, MIB and symbolic name.

FrameFlow recognizes the perceived technical barriers associated with the deployment of SNMP monitoring on a large scale and has boiled down the setup process to a few easy steps, all through our GUI. Using our point-and-click dashboard, our users can establish customized SNMP monitoring to suit the specific needs of their organization, without having to grapple with the technical terms and requirements of the protocol.

We even make customized SNMP monitoring easy, through our point-and-click dashboard, so you can forget about wrestling with OIDs and MIBs and quickly set up monitoring that suits the needs of your entire network.

Organizational Benefits of Effective Network Monitoring with SNMP

Once a solid and centralized monitoring platform is setup and established to cover all the devices on your network, (which is where the ubiquity of our SNMP Monitoring and FrameFlow software in general adds significant value) from the most high-powered and critical servers, to the most obscure temperature sensors at the back of the server room, many benefits can be unlocked for your organization by providing the sys admins and other techs managing the network a whole new tool set of tools at their disposal.

Proactively Prevent Network Outages

When the network goes down, everyone in your organization who depends on it will be acutely aware and network managers will be on the hot seat to get things up and running as quickly and effectively as possible. FrameFlow will continuously scan all the devices on your network, at frequencies that you dictate, deploying SNMP traps and polls for just about every type IP-enabled device that you can think of.

Performance lags for any of these devices or for your networks themselves will trigger alerts within the thresholds you establish, which will be sent to the individuals or team members who are responsible for these specific components. This kind of continuous monitoring will allow IT staff to take steps to address small issues before they become the big bottleneck problems that can bring a network crashing down and have the phone ringing angrily off the hook.

Quickly Address Problem Network Issues

Because FrameFlow will identify potential problems such as device performance failures, abnormal traffic fluctuations and more, before they cause a major breakdown, IT staff can begin taking steps to immediately address the situation as soon as an alert comes in, whether it be human or configuration errors, adverse environment factors or a variety of other issue that cause devices or network gear to fail.

The FrameFlow dashboard also provides various diagnostics, live network maps and activity logs to help identify and pinpoint the root of the problem and help guide IT staff towards a solution, saving significant time and money when a network outage occurs and often helping prevent an outage before it happens.

Generate Regular Network Performance Reports

FrameFlow generates network and device performance reports, within our suite of aesthetically pleasing dashboard templates, which are fully customizable. These reports provide both recent and historical data, and projected performance metrics, customized to dial in on the metrics that matter most. Not only do these performance reports assist with preventing network outages and quickly addressing failures when they do occur, they can also be useful when assessing the need to replace servers, networking gear or other devices on the network by analyzing the components historical performance and projected performance against the pending needs of the organization, a whole lot better than a gut sense that a component needs to be replaced.

Network performance reports also help to support any SLAs with clients, which is particularly useful for managed service providers.

Help Discover and Identify Security Threats on Your Network

With FrameFlow set up to monitor virtually all your devices across your entire network, you’ll soon know what normal traffic and activity levels look like vs. unexplained traffic spikes, abnormal data transfers, failing systems etc. which could indicate the presence of malware or some other security breach. You and/or your team will be alerted when activity occurs outside the thresholds you determine.

Security measures vary greatly for a variety of devices, but simultaneously monitoring the status and activity of all your networked devices via SNMP will help you spot security issues before they become bigger problems, such as unauthorized devices or systems being added to the network.

Our alerts and activity logs will also help you to track down data breaches or if intrusion software has gained access and can be a powerful complement to other types of security software your organization might deploy.

Gain Immediate ROI with Full Network Visibility

Due to our robust and highly scalable monitoring capabilities, and leveraging the versatility of SNMP monitoring for a huge variety of device types, FrameFlow can provide visibility into virtually every area of your network helping to prevent problems in previously hidden areas that might negatively affect your entire network and organization. Our alerts are highly customizable so that various teams will be notified of any critical or warning level issues in their areas of network management.

This level of network visibility, from the entire macro view of the network, to niche specialty areas will help prevent major outages, shorten the troubleshooting time needed to address network issues and give your IT staff the confidence to know that the network is being fully monitored, freeing up their time for other immediate and critical tasks. This level of support can translate into significant and direct ROI for your organization, especially over time.

FrameFlow Monitoring Can Help Manage Your Growing & Changing Network

With the march of network technology development, the growth of 5G networks and the resulting of rise connected devices, IP-enabled sensors and many other networked components all along the industrial supply chain, the need for monitoring the performance and reliability of all this equipment is only going to become more pressing.

Not only does FrameFlow SNMP monitoring help you keep tabs on your existing networked components, our software allows you to easily scan for and add new devices by batch lots, with capacity in the tens of thousands of devices for your network to grow without installing a new monitoring system. Our permission settings and customized alerts also allow for a delegation of responsibility within your organization as new sets of devices and functionality are added to your network, making network growth a manageable part of your operations.

Give FrameFlow at Try for Free or Book a Demo with Our Sales Staff

If you would like to give FrameFlow SNMP Monitoring a test run, simply download our free 30-day trial (no credit card required). If you have specific questions about implementing our software in your organization, you can visit our tutorials section or book a demo with one of our reps. We’d be happy to help answer your questions in a way that suits you best!

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