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Network Monitoring refers to a system that constantly oversees the operation of a computer network for slow, unfailing, or unresponsive components using specialized management software tools. Networking monitoring software ensures uninterrupted service by immediately notifying the network administrator through email, SMS, or other methods in case of any outages or technical glitches. These systems are employed by organizations of all sizes that require extensive IT networking.

Application performance monitoring software looks at IT tools and related workflow (the term is used in computer programming to capture and develop human-to-machine interaction) to ascertain, identify, and report issues related to the performance of applications to ensure it fulfills, or in certain circumstances, exceed the expectations of business and end users. This is done by recording the volume of transactions going through the system during the response time measurement and measuring the resources used by an application.

The primary job of a network monitoring system is to detect and report failure of devices or connections within a network. Overloaded or crashed servers can bring down the entire structure. These software programs determine the status of a server by checking at pre-specified intervals the network bandwidth utilization (the data rate supported by a network connection or interface) of links, the processor (CPU) utilization of hosts and other aspects of operations like uptime, response time, storage arrays, and availability.

A message—often called a watchdog message—is sent over the network to each host to check if it is responsive to requests. Status request failures – such as when a connection cannot be established, unacceptably slow response (time-out), or when something out of the orginary is detected, an alert message is sent by the monitoring system (via phone, mail, etc.) to system administrators.

The ping program is one example of a basic monitoring program. It is software that is available on most computers that make use of Internet Protocols (IP) to send text messages between each other. These ping tests are run to establish that the connection between two computers is working and the connection performance is along expected lines.

While ping system is useful, there are more advanced and sophisticated monitoring software like LANDesk that are generally used by administrators of larger computer networks. There are certain network monitoring software programs that serve the specific purpose of monitoring Web Servers to ensure their uninterrupted availability. Organizations that have Web servers located in various locations around the world make use of such software to quickly detect and rectify problems.