Basic Steps to Network Baselining

When it comes to network performance, one size does not fit all. The needs of your organization will be unique, as will the network infrastructure you have in place. This is why it’s so important to baseline your network before making any changes. Network baselining is the process of measuring and recording your network’s current state so that you can compare it to future states. This will give you a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t, and will help you make informed decisions about changes to your network. In this blog post, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide to network baselining.

The following information may be obtained using this process:

• Gather all relevant information on the hardware and software in use.

• Determine the use of resources.

• Identify network-related faults and concerns.

• Foresee any potential problems or challenges.

Why Baseline?

As previously stated, baselining is used to gather information on the network’s operation. It is a vital technique for identifying any faults that are or may develop in the network. Issues are categorised into two groups based on observations: control plane resources and data plane resources.

Control plane resources are specific to a network and device and are influenced by network design/infrastructure as well as data/resource utilisation. They are determined by CPU performance and memory allocation. Data plane resources, on the other hand, are influenced by the kind and volume of network traffic.

Steps of baselining

The following are the steps involved in baselining:

Networks and Sub-Networks Identification

The first and most important step is to identify the network for which we require information. Once the network is chosen, we locate and choose sub-networks that contribute to the information we want. A network may comprise several sub-networks, some of which may or may not contribute to the information we seek. As a result, it is best not to include them.

Parts or Modules identification

After identifying the network and sub-networks, we must determine which portion of the network we wish to baseline. A network, as we all know, is made up of several levels. In this stage, we determine the layers that must be baselined.

Information Collection

This is a critical stage. In this stage, we gather network and data information. The data gathered often comprises TCP/IP addresses, time modulations and delays between data packet flows, and, in certain situations, data included inside the packets. It is also critical that we collect the data and detect any patterns that may exist. Identify and correct any problems that arise during this process.

Report designing

In this stage, we create a log report based on the data we gathered. This report includes network usage, traffic components, statistics, and other information. This report also contains information on the data, as stated in the preceding stage, as well as records of any problems or issues that have occurred up to this point.

Report usage

This final stage is the key and most important phase in the baselining process. We no longer need to baseline our system to search for mistakes after the report is complete. Remember that we detected patterns in the third step? We may now examine the system to see if the patterns we noticed have changed. If there is any change, we may expect an issue to arise as a result. So, before the problem arises, we may take appropriate precautions to avert it. This is how the baseline report aids in the prediction of future difficulties that may arise and result in data loss.

Finally, baselining your network performance is a critical step in assessing the health and performance of your network. Understanding what typical behaviour looks like allows you to more readily spot when anything is incorrect and take corrective action. There are several tools available to assist you with this procedure, and the methods are pretty straightforward. You can guarantee that your network runs as effectively as possible with little time and effort.

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