What is Remote Network Monitoring (RMON)? | Atera’s Blog

How can Remote Network Monitoring (RMON) help to grow your business and take it to new heights? According to Paychex’s 2020 study, the average American has at least 1 hour of “downtime” per day at work. Let’s say your business has 70 employees, can you afford to waste 70 hours of potential revenue a day?

With office workers across the globe still working from home, monitoring productivity is more important than ever before. With RMON, you can monitor your company’s network traffic from one centralized location. Here, we look at RMNON, how it works, and how it can help your business boost productivity.

What is RMON?

Remote network monitoring is the method used to monitor local area network traffic to identify issues. These issues can come as a result of anything from network collisions and congestion, to packets that failed to reach their intended destination.

RMON provides network administrators with the ability to select network-monitoring probes with features that meet their business network needs. The implementation is usually found in the client and server models. The probes contain RMON software agents that collect information and analyse packets.

Why do MSPs Need RMON?

RMON implementation was designed to help network technicians monitor and analyze data remotely, without having to travel to disparate facilities. This is perfect for a multi-customer environment like managed services.

Think of the probes like servers and the Network Management applications communicating like clients. While both data collection and configuration agents use SNMP-based systems, probes take control of data collection and processes, which helps reduce SNMP traffic congestion. To further reduce congestion, information is only transmitted when required instead of continuous monitoring.

One disadvantage of this system is that remote devices shoulder more of the management burden, and require a lot more resources to do so. Some businesses try to “balance the scales” by implementing a subset of RMON. A minimal RMON agent can support only a few management features.

A key benefit of RMON is the performance thresholds and automatic alerts when the thresholds are crossed. This allows you to maintain a proactive network management strategy.

How does Remote Network Monitoring (RMON) work?

RMON implements as a standard MIB, or Management Information Base on devices. The RMON enabled devices can be permanently installed devices like Ethernet switches, repeaters, bridges, hubs, or routers.

The SNMP agent within RMON collects information and communicates it to an SNMP management application, and RMON MIBs highlight the objects that need management.
Manageable devices like hubs and routers need extra software to have RMON functionality and turn it into a probe. Hosted probes are implemented as add-on hardware modules with processing power and memory.

RMON is normally implemented on only one device or interface per subnet. The agent software runs on the router port, which monitors and collects Ethernet networking stats for the attached subnet. These stats relate to the physical layer and data link layer of the Open Systems Interconnection reference model for networking. An SNMP management console contacts the RMON agent when it needs to collect stats to help technicians analyze trends in network traffic.

What are the benefits of RMON?

Implementing RMON can be a massive boost to your business. Use RMON to:

Monitor performance

If your business has multiple locations, remote network monitoring software lets you manage devices in all areas. For instance, let’s say you manage the networks for a business with locations across the state, or you’re monitoring local branches in one city.

Remote Network Monitoring lets you view the performance and activities of a device in any location. This means that you can watch and fix device failures without travelling the distance. Network admins can organise location-specific maps to track devices in different branches.

RMON is specifically helpful for companies in one location and with a small team who are responsible for managing the entire network. With Remote Network Management augmented with RMON, you can fix problems without having to travel to the location.

It’s ideal, especially when your workforce is still working remotely due to COVID. This saves IT admin time, boosts productivity, and lets you relax in the knowledge the whole network is being monitored. Consultants responsible for monitoring networks and managed service providers also benefit from the ability to monitor a remote location without being at the actual site.

Improve productivity

Another critical safeguard against security issues is the ability to assign user permissions. Remote network monitoring tools allow you to set user permissions to improve the likelihood of a secure connection. You can also remotely monitor visibility and control which is foundational for security projects such as change management, micro-segmentation, or root cause analysis and incident response.

By streamlining tasks and workflows, talented personnel can focus their time on more essential tasks. With RMON, your systems will be continuously monitored regardless of where your staff are based.

Troubleshoot the problem

When system failures occur, they can be costly in terms of money, but they can also post “reputational risk”, problems involving negative customer perception and reaction to your business.

When you file a ticket in RMON, your administrators can be proactive and mitigate the problems that lead to internal or external IT issues. Implementing RMON means you can identify potential issues before they occur, saving time. Remote management means you can hire one administrator to manage all locations rather than invest in recruitment, hiring, and training or several new IT admins.

Enhance your security

Network admins may laugh at the idea of remote access because of security threats. One way to help secure the network is to set up encrypted authentication and ensure that every user has to log in the same way.

Another critical safeguard against security issues is the ability to assign user permissions. Remote network monitoring tools allow you to set user permissions to improve the likelihood of a secure connection, and also add visibility and control which is foundational for security projects such as change management, micro-segmentation, or root cause analysis and incident response.

Thinking about RMON for your Environment?

With simple network management protocols like RMON, automation, manual tasks, and workflows can be digitally transformed, leaving your team to work on the tasks that matter. Implementing RMON can improve productivity, streamline maintenance, management information bases (mib), and even enhance your businesses’ security.

Looking for more information on tools for remote management and maintenance? Atera’s all in one RMM and PSA has got you covered.