Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring is a growing avenue of network monitoring that enterprises are shifting their focus towards. This is only natural as IoT devices are becoming increasingly popular in both domestic and commercial settings. There are an estimated 11 billion IoT devices in the world right now, outnumbering all the people. With improvements in nano-scale technologies, device personalization, and network connectivity, this number will only continue to go up. As such, IoT monitoring is the only way to ensure that they function as intended, and if they don't- to resolve those issues.
The IoT refers to a network of connected devices communicating over a network. IoT enables users to monitor and manage devices in a network. For instance, they can schedule the operating hours of a home heating system. This is a simple domestic application of IoT. More commercial applications involve automation, closed control, and real-time monitoring in industries like automobile, manufacturing, and healthcare.
IoT network architecture: How does it work?
IoT operations occur over four layers.
Sensing layer: The lowest layer is where sensing takes place. IoT devices collect metrics like device status and other specific performance metrics and communicate them to the layer above.
Network layer: The second layer is the network layer. The scope of IoT monitoring is highest in this layer. Intermediary devices like IoT gateways and routers collect device data and connect them to the wider internet. These devices are usually the IoT equivalent of switches and routers. At this layer, encryption and authentication measures are taken to protect data. Communication between the first the second layer is carried out over protocols like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet.
Data processing layer: The third layer is the data processing layer. Here the data is analyzed and correlated to provide insights. The second and third layers communicate over TCP/IP protocols.
Application layer: This data is then presented to users through the fourth and top layer: the application layer. User interfaces are provided for the users to monitor device data and perform actions through applications or websites. Application processes are secured using protocols like HTTPS.
Why do we need IoT monitoring?
IoT use is both wide and varied, but if adequate focus isn't provided for IoT monitoring, IT admins will have limited visibility into the performance of these devices and often will have no idea what to do when issues arise. An IoT network can have hundreds of devices in it, and these devices often communicate over wireless networks, which are hard to manage and troubleshoot.
There can be a myriad of issues that can cause IoT devices to go down.
Bandwidth congestion
Weak signal strength
Gateways or routers going down
External attacks
Misconfigurations
In addition, there could be other issues with the supporting devices or the network that can affect IoT performance. IoT monitoring also involves ensuring that these devices and services are up and running. These issues include:
High WAN response time
Down websites or applications
IoT monitoring helps prevent unplanned outages. With proper IoT monitoring, you will have visibility on every component of the IoT network, including end devices, gateways, routers, databases, and applications. This gives you proactive insights about issues and a head start on fixing them.
What does an IoT monitoring tool do?
An IoT monitoring tool collects data from IoT devices, gateways, and high-level websites and applications to ensure that they perform optimally. It can perform varied operations like IoT performance monitoring, IoT availability monitoring, and IoT equipment. A good IoT monitoring tool will also offer features like prompt alerting, network visualization, easy device onboarding, failover, AI- and ML-powered insights, and more.
ManageEngine OpManager offers proactive IoT monitoring powered with a range of convenient features, including all those mentioned above.
OpManager: A comprehensive IoT monitoring platform
ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive network monitoring tool for servers, network devices, and virtualization that monitors IoT components to alert you regarding any potential discrepancies in them. OpManager uses thresholds to monitor performance and generates alerts when thresholds are violated. OpManager pushes these alerts to you via notifications like SMS, email, and push notifications to ensure that IoT performance issues are acknowledged and resolved.
IoT performance monitoring is essential Even if the end devices are lightweight with minimal processing. Moreover, higher-level IoT components like gateways, routers, and database servers need performance monitoring. OpManager monitors CPU utilization, memory usage, disk space and other performance metrics. Adaptive thresholds can be used to prevent alert floods and false positives by dynamically adjusting thresholds based on network activity.
Monitor IoT availability
Availability is key for IoT networks. With so many components at the lowest level, availability monitoring can be quite challenging. With OpManager, IoT availability monitoring is convenient. Once you enable status polling, OpManager polls the devices at set intervals and notifies you when they go down.
Monitor physical health of IoT devices
IoT equipment monitoring isn't complete without monitoring the hardware health of the component devices. OpManager can monitor hardware metrics like temperature, battery status, cooling fan speed, power supply status, voltage input, and processor clock speed. Hardware health reports provide detailed information on the hardware health of selected devices.
Enable efficient IoT traffic utilization
OpManager helps you monitor traffic utilization for IoT devices and interfaces. Set monitors using thresholds for incoming bytes, outgoing bytes, and total byte count so that OpManager can alert you before traffic utilization crosses the bandwidth limit. You can also generate reports to get better insights into traffic utilization. For instance, you can create a report for devices with the highest incoming traffic.
Clean up the signals for IoT devices
You can correlate IoT issues with poor signal strength with signal issues. With proper insights into signal strength and noise levels, you can ensure that every IoT device is within the coverage area. OpManager can monitor signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio, and noise levels to ensure that your devices get clean signals. In addition, OpManager can detect rogue devices and access points that connect to your network. This helps prevent bad actors from exploiting your network.
Visualize your IoT networks
Network visualization is a powerful tool that gives you a complete overview on your entire network. OpManager has loads of visualization tools to help you monitor IoT devices. OpManager maps out device relationships with its topology maps, graphs, dials, and heat maps. With an IoT monitoring dashboard at your disposal, you can see the real-time status of all your IoT devices in one glance.
Monitor network paths outside your network
For complete IoT monitoring, you might need to monitor network components that lie outside your network. For instance, you might use a cloud service provider to host the IoT storage database. OpManager's Network Path Analysis tool monitors network performance on a hop-by-hop basis for each node. You can see the latency and response times for each node to understand where performance issues occur.
FAQs on IoT monitoring
What is IoT monitoring?
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IoT monitoring involves monitoring the availability and performance of Internet of Things components in an environment. IoT monitoring is essential to ensure that IoT devices are available and perform as intended.
Why is IoT monitoring important?
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IoT monitoring gives network admins comprehensive visibility into their IoT environment. This is especially important considering the sheer number of IoT devices used in an IoT environment. In addition, administrators can proactively detect poor performance and prevent outages.
How to monitor IoT devices?
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You can use a network monitoring tool like OpManager to monitor IoT networks. OpManager has a unified console which allows you to track device availability, monitor performance metrics, detect faults and resolve them with a low MTTR.
What is a network device discovery tool?
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As IT infrastructure evolves, the size of networks ranges from a minimum of a few hundred devices to thousands of devices interconnected with each other. This makes network management not only crucial but also a complex job that is easier said than done. Also, this allows network administrators to discover the devices in their network in one go, monitor business-specific metrics, and maintain a healthy network infrastructure.
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