What is Network Performance Monitoring (NPM): How It Works & How to Deploy It

In this article, we’ll walk you through Obkio’s powerful Network Performance Monitoring features by exploring the “Network Performance” tab in Obkio’s Network Performance Monitoring App.

We’ll guide you through the video demonstration and take a closer look at the “Network Performance” tab, which provides a comprehensive overview of your network’s health. This tab not only displays the number of Monitoring Sessions currently configured in your Obkio account but also serves as a gateway to leveraging Obkio’s advanced NPM capabilities for optimizing your network performance.

Learn how to use Network Performance Monitoring in Obkio's app to monitor end-to-end network performance using network metrics to identify performance issues and improve the user experience.

Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) is the process of continuously monitoring and analyzing the performance of a network to ensure optimal functionality and user experience. It involves tracking key network metrics such as latency, jitter, packet loss, and throughput to identify and resolve performance issues before they impact users.

Let’s quickly walk through how to deploy and use Obkio’s Network Performance Monitoring tool to continuously monitor network performance from all ends of your network (from WAN to LAN).

Start by signing up for Obkio’s Free 14-Day Trial – no credit card required!

Simply visit Obkio’s website and complete the quick sign-up process. Once logged in, follow the 10-Minute Onboarding Wizard, which guides you through deploying monitoring agents and configuring tests effortlessly.

• 14-day free trial of all premium features
• Deploy in just 10 minutes
• Monitor performance in all key network locations
• Measure real-time network metrics
• Identify and troubleshoot live network problems

After setup, explore Obkio’s intuitive dashboard to monitor network performance, set up alerts, and analyze real-time metrics.

A Monitoring Session is a flow of synthetic UDP traffic between two Monitoring Agents deployed in key locations in your network. These agents exchange UDP packets at 500-millisecond intervals to continuously monitor network performance.

By default, Obkio’s Onboarding Wizard creates two Monitoring Sessions in all new accounts:

• Local to Public Agents: Monitors performance between your Local Monitoring Agents and Public Monitoring Agents pre-deployed over the Internet.
• Local to Local Agents: Monitors performance between Agents deployed within your internal network.

You can view your Monitoring Sessions in the Network Performance tab or the Live Network Status tab, which displays real-time performance data.

Both of these Monitoring Sessions were created to monitor performance from the “My Agent” local monitoring agent towards the two separate Public Monitoring Agents, called “AWS Montreal” and “Azure Quebec,” which are pre-deployed over the Internet.

To see the network performance history between two Monitoring Agents, first select a Monitoring Session to analyze. This will show you two network monitoring graphs: the “Network Response Time” graph and the “VoIP Quality” graph.

When you hover over the graph, you will see a tab showing you specific information about your network performance at this time. It displays network metrics like:

• Latency: The time it takes for data to travel between two points (measured in milliseconds).
• Jitter: The variation in latency over time.
• Packet Loss: The percentage of data packets lost during transmission. By default, packet loss is highlighted in yellow when it exceeds 2% and in red when it exceeds 5%.

• If we look at the graph as a whole, the dark blue line will indicate the latency, which is about 21 milliseconds.
• The blue and gray visuals above and below will indicate the jitter.
• And the yellow and possibly red lines will indicate packet loss. We can see that packet loss is at 4.72%.

By default, the line will be yellow when the packet loss is over 2%. As you can see, it is at 4.72%. If packet loss is over 5%, with the default account settings, the line will appear red.

Then we have the “VoIP Quality” graph. This graph displays the quality of calls made over the network, between the two Monitoring Agents in this particular Monitoring Session.

It measures the quality of VoIP calls using the Mean Opinion Score (MOS), a popular algorithm in IP telephony. The MOS score is calculated based on latency and packet loss metrics.

Since we know the latency and amount of packet loss between the two Monitoring Agents, thanks to our UDP packets, we can extract the MOS score, which is a very popular algorithm used in the world of IP telephony.

Monitoring Templates are used to configure Monitoring Sessions between your Agents. You can access and customize these templates by clicking the gear icon in the Network Performance tab.

Obkio provides two default templates:

• Monitoring Between My Agents: For monitoring performance between Agents deployed in your network.
• Monitoring Towards Internet: For monitoring performance between your Agents and Obkio’s Public Monitoring Agents.

You can create additional templates to monitor specific network segments or customize thresholds for alerts (e.g., adjusting packet loss thresholds).

In the Monitoring Template details, you’ll see the template configurations, starting with the name. The Monitoring Template builds Monitoring Sessions between all the Agents in the first list of the details section. These are the Agents that are part of the “My Agents” group.

With the Agents that are in the second list of Agents or Agent Groups. Here, the Agent group called "Public Agents" is selected. Therefore all the Agents in the first group will test the network performance towards all the Public Monitoring Agents in the second group.

You can also configure parameters and thresholds in your Monitoring Template to generate alerts.

By default in the “Network Response Time” graph, the packet loss indicator is yellow at more than 2% and red at more than 5% of packet loss. But this is where you can modify parameters like this. provide preset settings for you, but you can also set your own custom thresholds manually.

Toggle on Live Mode to view real-time performance data between your Monitoring Agents. This feature is particularly useful for identifying intermittent issues or spikes in latency and packet loss.

Once you’ve configured your Monitoring Templates, click Save to apply your changes. There’s no limit to the number of Monitoring Templates you can create, allowing you to scale your monitoring setup as your network grows.

Below is the complete transcript of the video, complete with timestamps, to help you follow along and understand every step of the process.

0:01 Welcome! In this video, we’re looking at the “Network Performance” tab in Obkio’s Network Performance Monitoring App. This tab displays the number of Monitoring Sessions currently configured in your Obkio account.

0:10 There are currently two Monitoring Sessions in this account. By default, Obkio’s Onboarding Wizard creates these two Monitoring Sessions in all new Obkio accounts.

0:22 Both of these Monitoring Sessions were created to monitor performance from the “My Agent” local monitoring agent towards the two separate Public Monitoring Agents, called “AWS Montreal” and “Azure Quebec,” which are pre-deployed over the Internet.

0:30 You can also see the number of Monitoring Sessions in your account by navigating to the “Live Network Status” tab. Here you can also see the performance of your Monitoring Sessions in real time.

0:41 So what is a monitoring session, you may ask? A monitoring session is a flow of synthetic UDP traffic between two Monitoring Agents deployed in key locations in your network. The Monitoring Agents exchange UDP traffic to continuously monitor network performance between each other.

0:51 To see the network performance history between two Monitoring Agents, first select a Monitoring Session to analyze.

1:00 This will show you two network monitoring graphs: the “Network Response Time” graph and the “VoIP Quality” graph.

1:04 Both graphs are based on the UDP packets, which are exchanged at 500 millisecond intervals between the two Monitoring Agents in the Monitoring session, the “My Agent” Agent and the “AWS Montreal” Agent.

1:13 We are currently looking at about 1 hour and 20 minutes of data, but you can change the time period from the date property on top.

1:22 Let’s first look at the “Network Response Time” graph. When you hover over the graph, you will see a tab showing you specific information about your network performance at this time. In this example, we can see metrics like latency, jitter and packet loss.

1:32 We can see that packet loss is at 4.72%.

1:37 If we look at the graph as a whole, the dark blue line will indicate the latency, which is about 21 milliseconds. The blue and gray visuals above and below will indicate the jitter. And the yellow and possibly red lines will indicate Packet Loss.

1:53 By default, the line will be yellow when the packet loss is over 2%. As you can see, it is at 4.72%. If packet loss is over 5%, with the default account settings, the line will appear red.

2:03 Below is the “VoIP Quality” graph. This graph displays the quality of calls made over the network, between the two Monitoring Agents in this particular Monitoring Session.

2:14 The graph is based on the “MOS” or “Mean Opinion Score”, which is calculated from the UDP packets exchanged between the same two Monitoring Agents.

2:20 Since we know the latency and amount of packet loss between the two Monitoring Agents, thanks to our UDP packets, we can extract the MOS score, which is a very popular algorithm used in the world of IP telephony.

2:33 From here, you can also toggle on “Live Mode” to see the live performance between your two Monitoring Agents.

2:40 Here we can see that the latency is approximately around 20 milliseconds, but that sometimes it does go above and below with some spikes.

2:49 You can go back to the historical view by toggling off “Live Mode.”

3:03 If you return to the “Network Performance” tab, you’ll also see a column called “Monitoring Template.”

3:09 Monitoring Templates are used to configure the Monitoring Sessions between your Agents. You can access your Monitoring Templates from the small gear icon at the top right.

3:18 Once you click on the gear icon, you’ll be brought to the list of Monitoring Templates.

3:22 This account currently has two Monitoring Templates. These two are created by Obkio’s Onboarding Wizard as part of the default configuration with new Obkio accounts.

3:31 The first one is called “Monitoring Between My Agents”. This template is configured to monitor network performance between Agents you deployed in your network.

3:37 The second template is called “Monitoring Towards Internet.”

3:41 This template is used to monitor the performance between Agents you’ve deployed and the Agents that Obkio has pre-deployed over the Internet, called Public Monitoring Agents.

3:49 In the Monitoring Template details, you’ll see the template configurations, starting with the name.

3:52 The Monitoring Template builds Monitoring Sessions between all the Agents in the first list of the details section. These are the Agents that are part of the “My Agents” group.

3:59 With the Agents that are in the second list of Agents or Agent Groups. Here, the Agent group called "Public Agents" is selected.

4:08 Therefore all the Agents in the first group will test the network performance towards all the Public Monitoring Agents in the second group.

4:15 In the “Advanced Parameters” section, you can configure your parameters and thresholds to generate alerts.

4:20 As we mentioned previously, by default in the “Network Response Time” graph, the packet loss indicator is yellow at more than 2% and red at more than 5% of packet loss. But this is where you can modify parameters like this.

4:28 We provide preset settings for you, but you can also set your own custom thresholds manually.

4:35 Click on “Save” to save your changes and leave the menu.

4:47 Note that there is no limit on the amount of Monitoring Templates you can create in your Obkio account. You are free to create as many as you want.

4:50 If you want to create a third Monitoring Template, simply click on the “plus” icon at the top, give your template a name, select the Agents in the two lists to create the Monitoring Session, and then click on “Create.” You’ll then have your third Monitoring Template.

5:10 And there you have it! This is how to visualize the network performance between your Monitoring Agents via Monitoring Sessions, and how to configure Monitoring Templates in your Obkio account.

Need more insights to become a network monitoring pro? Dive into Obkio’s Video Library, filled with tutorials, step-by-step walkthroughs, real-world use cases, and informative webinars. Whether you’re just starting out or aiming to fine-tune your network setup, our video resources offer expert guidance to help you maximize the potential of Obkio’s tools.

👉 Visit Obkio’s Video Library

Effective network performance monitoring requires the right tools, and Obkio delivers exactly that. As a comprehensive Network Performance Monitoring solution, Obkio offers end-to-end visibility, enabling users to quickly pinpoint and resolve issues related to networks, the Internet, applications, and ISPs.

Obkio provides complete visibility, monitoring every part of your infrastructure – from local networks and devices to applications, services, and ISP or MSP networks.

Obkio isn’t just a monitoring tool – it’s your trusted ally in maintaining a reliable and high-performing network. Here’s why businesses rely on Obkio:

• 14-day free trial of all premium features
• Deploy in just 10 minutes
• Monitor performance in all key network locations
• Measure real-time network metrics
• Identify and troubleshoot live network problems