Life is about balance—and your network mapping strategy should be no exception. Manually mapping your network can be a frustrating, if not impossible, undertaking given the number of devices on a network. But using a fully automatic network mapping tool can quickly make your maps complicated and confusing.
To ensure you have the best view of your network’s health, strike a balance. Look for network mapping software that has auto-discover features as well as functionality to manually manipulate the visual and logical view of your maps—to truly bring your environment to life. Here’s how:
Quickly Build a Strong Foundation with Autodiscovery
The strongest and most effective use of network mapping with autodiscovery is to identify all the assets you have broadcasting on your network. Network administrators might think they have a solid idea of what resources are connecting to their network but running a full autodiscovery may provide different and surprising results. Think of your map as a living document and not just a static visualization of your network.
Automatic network mapping tools, like Intermapper from Fortra, eliminates the manual work of capturing every device and makes it quick and easy to get a visual inventory of network devices. And admins get more control over what is being monitored, whether you want to diagram your entire environment, an IP address range, or even just a single subnet.
Manually Manipulate Your Map to Fit Your Needs
Managing your maps should always have some built in functions that will take care of the majority of the logistical data, like logs and database functions. But ultimately, network admins are looking for control. And a fully automatic map that updates logical connections without intervention makes tracking down changes to your network challenging.
The benefit of the manual work needed to create a map allows admins to be able to build out a map that represents their true environment. Solutions like Intermapper provide full map customization and visualization that make maps very effective in providing network visibility as well as looking more appealing. This level of control gives admins the chance to become more familiar with how their network is laid out or constructed, leading to better visibility.
Find the Right Balance with Automatic Network Mapping and Network Monitoring
Networks are constantly changing and growing. Once you have your map built and fully customized using automatic network mapping software, a solution with network monitoring features help you easily manage your network infrastructure by running additional scans to look for changes. Network monitoring solutions give you a live view of what’s going on with your network by polling devices and presenting you with the performance data.
Combining the power of autodiscovery with network monitoring capabilities gives you a more proactive approach to managing your network infrastructure. For example, when it’s time to make network upgrades, easily build out new maps as they are implemented. Then get a closer view of how your devices are performing before and after upgrades to make informed changes for optimal performance.
Get Comprehensive Network Mapping—and Monitoring—with Intermapper
Greater visibility leads to a healthier network. Intermapper provides network admins with the full picture of your network infrastructure by mapping and monitoring everything with an IP address to give you a look at your entire environment. With a mix of both management from the operator and management from the solution, Intermapper gives you the right balance to help you save time and solve network issues faster—all while maintaining full control over your maps.
