SolarWinds Adds Deep Packet Inspection to Network Monitoring Tool

Five Ways Encryption Has (or Hasn’t) Changed Since Snowden

One of the biggest problems with managing IT is correlating the impact of a particular network issue to the applications that might be affected by that problem.

A new release of the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) software is designed to make it a lot easier for the average IT organization to rise to that challenge.

Chris LaPoint, senior director of product management for SolarWinds, says version 11.0 of SolarWinds NPM makes use of deep packet inspection technology to identify how response times for over 1,200 applications are being impacted by a particular networking issue.

LaPoint says that while traditional network monitoring tools have been able to identify networking issues, most IT organizations have found it challenging to discover which specific applications are being affected. By adding deep packet inspection capabilities to a network monitoring tool that is priced starting under $3,000, LaPoint says that the average IT organization can now afford to take advantage of a management capability that previously was available only in more expensive network monitoring tools.

In the absence of sophisticated network monitoring tools, the average network administrator gets blamed for a lot of things that are often beyond their control. SolarWinds NPM, says LaPoint, provides a comprehensive view of network fault, performance, availability, traffic and latency issues in a way that enables IT organizations to better prioritize which issues need to be addressed first based on the applications being affected.

Most IT organizations want to do the best job possible, but they don’t always have access to the tools they need to do the job right. But as network monitoring tools improve and their price points become more affordable, the job of being a network administrator should become less thankless as well.