Editure NMS uses a range of industry standard measurement techniques in a blended way to provide a complete view of environment health.

1.   Ping

A standard network test with a very low network overhead. This is implemented at a very low level on most pieces of equipment and therefore gives a good indication of network availability irrespective of network load.

2.   SNMP

The ironically titled Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a feature of most modern networkable equipment. It is a versatile protocol which allows for data collection on a large variety of things such as network load, device status and storage capacity.

3.   Application Monitoring HTTP, HTTPS

Editure NMS measures the total load time of a web page, rather than just the initial connection handshake to the destination web server. It is often useful to know the total “load” time and to log, report and if required alert against this variable. Many web page issues affect load time, such as slow database or slow disk performance, and these are frequently not reflected in handshake time testing.

4.   Application Monitoring SMTP

Unlike most monitoring environments, Editure NMS looks at end to end performance of the service rather than a simple connection acceptance and handshake validation. In this instance Editure NMS generates a test email from within its own engine, waits for delivery of the message and then validates the intact status of that message. Response time is then logged. Alarm thresholds can be created for any event within this test cycle, including response time.

5.   Application Monitoring NTP

A number of environments now run time-dependent services, such as time clocks, swipe cards, voice messaging etc which rely on accurate timestamps. For this reason, Editure NMS monitors NTP (Network Time Protocol) not only to ensure that it is responding but that it is responding correctly against an independent reference.

6.   Traffic Analysis

Editure NMS allows a detailed breakdown and logging of traffic types by protocol by source/destination across your network. This granular and detailed reporting allows easy diagnosis of “hungry” protocols using too much bandwidth and can assist with traffic shaping strategies. This functionality is implemented via passive monitoring and does not require additional equipment nor add any significant overhead to existing network traffic.

7.   Probes for meshed networks or DR sites

Editure believes that the NMS service should be implemented with the minimum amount of equipment possible. However, there are some monitoring environments which benefit from an independent appliance collecting data from within that network segment. A typical example is remote data centres in a meshed network where detailed analysis of remote traffic flows is required.