Can you tell me the different factors that affect the performance and reliability of a client network, and how network monitoring tools might help?
Many things can affect the performance of a network. It could be something as small as a hardware failure, outdated software, downtime, or something more serious such as a security breach or network reliability issues. An interviewer that knows what a client needs are is going to ask specific questions that relate to the duties you will have as a consultant at a client site.
Here are a few things that you should research ahead of time, and be ready to answer. The interviewer will likely ask about your experience with the performance of hardware maintenance, how frequently you do software updates and when you run a performance analysis on the systems using network performance tools, assessments done of the reliability of the client network, downtime schedules, failure frequency, and unforeseen catastrophic failures. Research all these areas because these all affect the performance and reliability of a network.
"Having worked at many client sites over the years, I have learned to use a number of different network monitoring tools to optimize the performance of client networks. There are a number of different factors that affect the performance and reliability of a client network. Here are some that I have come across that have been pretty consistent from client to client. For me, the important ones are hardware failure, outdated software patches, security breaches, and user abuse and carelessness. There are some network monitoring tools that I use that help with most if not all of these issues. OpManager is a tool that I use which helps consultants target poor performance by providing a visual dashboard of real-time utilization throughout the network, which helps me monitor traffic and usage throughout the system."
