Defining network observability

Let’s go straight to the point: what is network observability about?

To answer this, it’s convenient to understand first what network monitoring is because network observability supersedes it. Network monitoring is part of the wide IT operations monitoring focused on the network infrastructure.

Even though you are likely used to the network monitoring term, there is no academic definition of it, and everyone understands it slightly differently. We define network monitoring as measuring the performance and availability of the network infrastructure.

Related to this goal, you may be familiar with some of the technologies that have provided information about the operational state of the network:

• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) polls and traps
• Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) requests (e.g., ping)
• Flow analysis (e.g., NetFlow)
• Packet capture (e.g., tcpdump)
• Logs (e.g., Syslog)

These technologies...