Why Is Monitoring Network Latency Important?
Excessive network latency creates bottlenecks in the network, which lead to a reduction of effective bandwidth. When determining network speed, it is thus important to use not only a bandwidth calculator, but also to run a network latency test. A high variation of PING times on a data line (so-called “jitter”) can be a sign of an overloaded device or data line. A well performing data line should show an almost steady value. Too many lost PINGs (“packet loss”) is also a sign of an overloaded network device. QoS monitoring (with PRTG’s Qos sensor) is essential for VoIP network monitoring as VoIP connections are affected by even small network latency issues which might not have any effect on other network connections. Another of PRTG’s VoIP monitoring tools is the IP SLA sensor. PRTG includes a free IP SLA monitor, so if you own CISCO IOS enabled hardware, you can collect network performance information using IP SLA monitoring.
