The Open Source Monitoring Conference · 📆 Nov. 17–19, 2026 · 📍Nuremberg · ⭐️20th Anniversary Edition

Network Monitoring

Detect Failures Early

Without network monitoring, you usually don’t notice problems until users start complaining. With Icinga, you can keep an eye on switches, routers, firewalls, and Wi-Fi, including bandwidth and error counters. You can see bottlenecks and outages in Grafana before they become a real problem.
Get advice now

Everything at a Glance

Switches, routers, firewalls, and access points are all managed centrally through a single tool. A place to monitor the status of your entire network.

Topology Instead of Individual Devices

Icinga maps dependencies between your devices. A failure in the core switch does not trigger ten individual alarms for each device connected to it.

Bandwidth is measurable

You can see the traffic per port and interface before a connection becomes a bottleneck and meetings start to freeze up.

Uniformly via SNMP

Standardized polling of switches, routers, and firewalls, regardless of the manufacturer—whether Cisco, Juniper, or Fortinet.

Open source, no lock-in

Based on Icinga (GPL). No licensing pitfalls; full control over configuration and validation logic, even for specialized hardware.

Operations can be outsourced

Upon request, MyEngineer will handle day-to-day operations, including alerts and responses. You can keep track of everything via the dashboard without having to take any action yourself.

What is network monitoring?

Network monitoring means keeping an eye on the infrastructure between your servers— that is, switches, routers, firewalls, and access points. Icinga checks port status, bandwidth, error counters, and the dependencies between devices. Here’s how to identify bottlenecks and outages before they affect your users.

To clarify: Server monitoring checks the status of each individual system—CPU, RAM, running processes, and services. Log management analyzes the events generated by these systems. Network Monitoring checks the connection between them. We consolidate our servers and network into a single central IT monitoring system, with a dashboard and alerting for both.

Common Problems Without Network Monitoring

Network problems almost never manifest themselves as technical issues at first, but rather as complaints: “The Internet is slow,” or “The connection keeps dropping.”

Core Switch Fails Silently

Redundant uplinks often prevent outages. Without monitoring, you won’t realize that redundancy is currently lacking until the second switch fails as well.

A port becomes unstable

A faulty network port causes sporadic connection drops that cannot be reproduced until someone checks the interface error counters.

Bandwidth is running low

Bandwidth usage rises over the course of several weeks until video calls freeze and file uploads take forever. Without traffic monitoring, you don’t notice the problem until the bottleneck is already apparent.

Do any of these problems sound familiar to you?

In a brief conversation, we’ll determine where you currently have the greatest need for action.

Free Consultation

Here’s how we work with you

Four steps, identical to every NETWAYS solution, from analyzing your network topology to reliable network monitoring during operation.

Step 1

Analysis & Concept

We'll review your network topology and work with you to determine which devices are critical and how they depend on one another.

→ A dependency map of your network instead of a list of individual devices.

"
Step 2

Setup & Integration

We set up SNMP checks for switches, routers, and firewalls and map the parent-child relationships between your devices in Icinga.

→ Traffic and status data in Grafana, directly from your live network.

"
Step 3

Commissioning & Threshold Values

Your network monitoring is going live. During the first few weeks, we'll adjust the thresholds for bandwidth and error counts to match your actual usage.

→ Alarms that actually mean something—no background noise with every little spike.

"
Step 4

Support & Operations

If you’d like, we can take over day-to-day operations completely (outsourcing via MyEngineer), or your team can learn how to handle checks, topology maintenance, and escalation rules through our training courses.

→ Monitoring that grows along with your network.

This covers your network monitoring

The following components can be implemented individually or in combination, whether you’re dealing with a single switch or a connection between multiple locations.

Firewall Monitoring

Firewalls & Security Gateways

Throughput, sessions, and availability of your firewalls and VPN gateways, including failover status for redundant setups.

Effect: Detect when redundancy is currently missing, not only after the second failure.

Network Monitoring

Switches & Routers

Port status, interface traffic, and error counters via SNMP, for every switch and router in your network.

Effect: Detect a wobbly port before it turns into a recurring connection drop.

Traffic & Latency

Bandwidth & Latency

Traffic load on your lines and response times between locations, displayed as a trend in Grafana.

Benefit: Identify bottlenecks on the network before they affect meetings and uploads.

Wi-Fi Monitoring

Wi-Fi & Access Points

Connection quality, number of clients, and utilization of your access points across all locations.

Result: Identify poor Wi-Fi performance before users start complaining.

Here’s What Network Monitoring Offers You

Less Downtime · Calmer Users · Less Work for the IT Team

Plannable Capacity

You’ll notice a lack of redundancy and unstable ports before they cause a complete loss of connection.

Reliable figures

You can spot bottlenecks on the network before the first complaints about a slow connection start coming in.

Fewer Alarms

Dependencies between your devices ensure that you only receive alerts about what really matters—not about every single device behind a failed switch.

What is your solution built with?

Tried-and-true open-source components for your network monitoring, operated in-house or through NETWAYS Managed Services. You decide what you’ll do yourself and what we’ll take care of.

Icinga

SNMP checks for switches, routers, and firewalls, with dependencies and prioritized alerts.

Grafana

Traffic and utilization trends by device and location, rather than individual snapshots.

Prometheus

Prometheus is the de facto standard for metrics-based monitoring in cloud-native environments. It collects and stores time series data from all your services.

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is the vendor-neutral standard for instrumentation. You generate and collect metrics, logs, and traces in a consistent manner, without being tied to a specific provider.

We’ll integrate what you’re already using with

Icinga monitors virtually anything that has an interface: via a plugin, agent, or SNMP. Here you’ll find a selection of the services we typically integrate.

Servers & Systems

  • Linux
  • Windows
  • SSH / Agents
  • Processes & Services
  • Container

Applications & Services

  • HTTP / HTTPS
  • Databases
  • TLS Certificates
  • APIs

Server Manufacturers

  • Dell (iDRAC)
  • HPE (iLO)
  • Lenovo
  • Cisco
  • Fujitsu

Network & Hardware

  • Switches & Routers
  • Firewalls
  • SNMP
  • IPMI
  • UPS / Sensors

Software

  • SAP
  • Oracle Database
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • VMware vSphere
  • Exchange / Active Directory

Network Hardware

  • Cisco
  • Juniper
  • Aruba (HPE)
  • Fortinet
  • MikroTik

Expertise in Monitoring

Want to dig deeper? You might find these blog posts on monitoring interesting.

Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions About This Solution

What does network monitoring involve?

2
3

Network monitoring covers the core components of your infrastructure: switches and routers, firewalls and security gateways, as well as Wi-Fi and access points. On top of that, there's the bandwidth and latency between your locations. Icinga not only checks the status of individual devices, but also the dependencies between them.

How does Icinga detect a wobbly network port?

2
3

Icinga detects a fluctuating network port by regularly querying a switch's interface error counters via SNMP and triggering an alarm when error rates rise, even if the port returns to normal operation in the meantime.

Why should a core switch have a different priority than an access point?

2
3

A core switch should be given a higher priority because its failure could potentially paralyze your entire network, whereas a single access point affects only one room. Icinga maps these dependencies so that the escalation level matches the actual importance.

What is the difference between network monitoring and server monitoring?

2
3

The difference between network monitoring and server monitoring lies in what each focuses on: Network monitoring checks the availability and utilization of the infrastructure between your systems—that is, switches, routers, and firewalls—usually via SNMP. Server monitoring checks what is happening on the system itself—that is, the CPU, RAM, and services

Is network monitoring also available as a managed service?

2
3

Yes, NETWAYS also offers network monitoring as a managed service. Upon request, NETWAYS will handle the entire operation of your network monitoring via MyEngineer®, including nighttime response to critical alerts.

Alina RabenmüllerBook a personal consultation with AlinaIndividual open source solutions tailored to you and your business.Get in touch

We look forward to your message






    captcha

    We look forward to your message






      captcha