How to Perform a Network Audit

• What is a Network Audit?
• Why Perform a Network Audit?
• Step 1. Plan Your Network Audit
• Step 2. Use Network Performance Monitoring
• Step 3. Collect Network Data
• Step 4. Analyze Network Data
• Step 5. Detect Network Issues
• Step 6. Identify Actionable Steps
• Start A Network Audit

A Network Audit is the process of reviewing and evaluating the performance and security of a network infrastructure.

The process involves analyzing the network's architecture, configuration, and protocols to identify potential vulnerabilities and issues that could impact the network's performance and security, and affect the end-user experience.

This can be done using manual or automated tools, like Network Performance Monitoring software, which will make the process much more efficient and accurate.

When people complain about performance issues, the network is always to blame. But is it really a network issue? Here’s where a network audit comes in.

A network audit can have a variety of goals, depending on your network and need. For businesses with large network infrastructures, a network audit is especially important.

• Identify Network Problems: When it comes to network issues, some people need to see it to believe it. If your network is experiencing issues, a network audit will help you identify and solve them.

• Get Support: Use the results from the network audit to implicate external teams or Service Providers to help you troubleshoot network problems.

• Prove It: If it’s not a network issue, a network audit will help you prove it so you can focus your attention elsewhere.

• Prioritization: Find vulnerabilities in your network and prioritize what infrastructure or network locations need to be upgraded or optimized.

• Migration or Deployment: Prepare your network for a new migration (like MPLS to SWD-WAN) or service deployment (like VoIP) by identifying network issues that could affect the process.

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Now that you know what a network audit can do, before you begin, you need to determine why you want to perform a network audit. Set your objectives and expectations, whether it’s a migration, service deployment, optimization or problem-solving.

Next, you need to plan for how you’re going to perform the network audit, and what tools are available to you.

There are different tools available to help you audit your network, but to really understand your network performance, you need a tool that:

• Monitors end-to-end network performance
• Monitor performance from the end-user perspective
• Delivers network performance reports and data for analyzing

A tool like Obkio's Network Performance Monitoring & Troubleshooting software is designed to help IT pros audit and understand their network performance. Obkio monitors network performance with Monitoring Agents which are deployed at key network locations and exchange synthetic traffic between each other.

Start a free Network Audit with Obkio’s free 14-Day Trial. Learn more on the Network Audit Page.

Once you’ve deployed your Network Performance Monitoring tool, the network audit begins. Obkio will provide you with all the data you need to audit the performance of every end of your network.

Obkio’s Monitoring Agents will start exchanging traffic to measure network metrics like jitter, packet loss, and latency and display them on Obkio’s Network Response Time Graph.

Measuring network metrics allows you to understand and identify any performance issues in your network, which is one of the main goals of a network audit.

You may have an inkling that your network is experiencing issues, but you don’t always have the proof. Obkio collects the data you need to prove that there’s a network issue or not.

Once you’ve collected network performance data, it’s time to start analyzing. Here are some ways to do that:

that this is a high level view and we are able to calculate for each site the number of minutes that a site's network performance is less than ideal.

Network Performance Reports provide a high-level view of your network performance and any network issues. They allow you to calculate, for each network site, the number of minutes during which a site's network performance is less than ideal. Reports are delivered right to your inbox, and you can schedule reports and even share them with your team or Service Provider.

Historical Data allows you to set a baseline for your network performance, so you can easily see when network performance deviates from the norm. It also allows you to analyze, compare, and troubleshoot performance from the past, and catch intermittent issues that appear and disappear sporadically.

Dashboards allow you to view and compare all the information gathered by Obkio’s Monitoring Agents. With dashboards, you can analyze data and come to conclusions about what's happening in the network and view all your network metrics in one place.

The Chord Diagram provides a visual representation of network status by Network Monitoring Agent and provides a single visual overview of global network performance. From here, you can see the live performance of every network location by colour (green, yellow and red).

Knowing your network is experiencing issues is just the beginning. The most important part of the job is discovering what the problems are, when they happened and where.

By analyzing the data from your Network Performance Monitoring app, you can now easily identify network problems, including:

• What the problem is
• Where the problem is located
• What caused the problem
• When the problem happened
• Who is responsible for the network segment

Identifying network problems is always a key part of a network audit. Network problems, especially intermittent network problems, frustrate users, impact your network performance, and can derail a new migration or deployment.

Pro-Tip: A tool like Obkio also allows you to set up Automatic Alerts for network issues, so you can be notified immediately.

How to Detect and Identify Intermittent Network Problems

Learn how to detect intermittent network problems to troubleshoot performance issues that are hard to catch with Obkio Network Monitoring software.

Learn more

At this point, you’ll now know if your network is causing issues, and if so, what they are, when they happened, and where. From here, it’s time to turn data into actionable steps.

The network performance reports will be your most valuable tool for identifying where your network vulnerabilities are located and what they are.

• For Internal Network Issues: Work with your internal team to troubleshoot. You can share results from network performance reports with your team members, and use tools like Obkio’s Network Device Monitoring to troubleshoot problems like high bandwidth and CPU usage.

• For External Network Issues: Share network performance reports to prove to your Service Provider that problems are coming from their network. Troubleshoot using Visual Traceroutes to pinpoint exactly where problems are located and share traceroute results with your Service Provider for faster troubleshooting.

• Upgrade or Optimize: Your network audit may also help you discover weaknesses in certain parts of your network. At this point, you may need to update your network equipment’s firmware, upgrade network devices, or increase your network’s bandwidth availability.

A network audit is extremely important to the health of your network. It gives you a complete overview of your network's current health, and helps you plan for network optimizations and updates for the future.

As your business grows, it’s important to make sure that your network can keep up.

Start a free Network Audit with Obkio’s free 14-Day Trial. Learn more on the Network Audit Page.