The goal
is to find out which parts of network should be upgraded / reorganized to improve network health (reliability and performance).
What are the methods to monitor network traffic, detect bottlenecks, latency, packet loss? Can i do it from 1 point in network or do i have to plug my computer in specific network places?
What would be the best strategy to check networks load, detect bottleneck etc?
Now there are many tools, but is installing it and running anywhere enought for ntop, cacti? I`v googled around and found something that says
ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does.
But I cannot use it until i understand how to gather the data, so i`m asking this question.
Background
Our network is totally built on cheap network switches but the network has pretty much expanded involving Computers, Network cameras and some other hardware with network interfaces. All of network devices are 100mbit, none are 1gbit.
- Cameras get recorded on few PCs at distant locations and viewed on other PCs at distant locations.
- Computers are no more than 50, but few are pretty distant (large area here), some are 300meters away etc. There is a radio link and fibre optic connceting those places. These computers usually connect to database application.
Network map
- Red lines are Fibre optic
- Black lines are Ethernet cables
- Boxes are physical locations