If you’ve ever had a user call in and say “I can’t connect, but the guy next to me can”, you already know the frustration of a duplicate IP address. It’s one of those problems that seems minor until it hits a critical server, a printer fleet, or worse, your DHCP infrastructure—and suddenly half the office is offline.

Duplicate IP conflicts are sneaky. They’re not a glamorous cyberattack or a dramatic hardware failure. They’re usually caused by something small—a mis-configured static IP, overlapping DHCP scopes, or an IoT device that didn’t release its lease. But the impact? Hours of downtime, productivity lost, security gaps, and a lot of hair-pulling while you hunt through logs.

That’s why serious network teams rely on a duplicate IP scanner. Think of it as an early-warning system that flags conflicts before they escalate, so you spend less time firefighting and more time keeping the business running. (Which is precisely what FirstWave excels in!)

Why Duplicate IPs Happen (and Why They’re Worse Now)

In the past, when your network was a handful of switches, a DHCP server, and some desktops, duplicate IPs were manageable. Today? Networks look like patchworks:

• Hybrid environments mix on-premises, multi-cloud, and remote access.

• IoT and BYOD are adding thousands of devices with varying behaviors.

• Virtual machines and containers are spinning up and down faster than DHCP can blink.

All of these make duplicate IPs less of an “if” and more of a “when.” And when they happen, they don’t just knock one laptop offline—they can knock out:

• A payroll server during end-of-month.

• A VoIP system in the middle of client calls.

• A VPN gateway that remote staff rely on.

The cost isn’t just downtime—it’s lost trust from your users, unnecessary overtime for IT, and potential compliance violations if service availability is mandated.

How a Duplicate IP Scanner Actually Helps

Yes, you could manually check ARP tables, log into switches, or walk the floor with a packet sniffer. But those methods don’t scale.

A duplicate IP scanner automates this grunt work:

1. Scans your ranges to see who’s alive and what IP they claim.

2. Flags conflicts in real time—before users start raising tickets.

3. Ties into your DHCP/DNS/IPAM stack, so you’re not just reacting, you’re fixing.

It’s the difference between waiting for smoke to set off the fire alarm vs. having sensors that detect a spark before it catches.

Features That Actually Matter

Many tools claim to scan for duplicate IP addresses, but what makes them usable in a real operational environment, you ask? That’s why you want to ensure that when you’re looking at software, you check off these big-ticket items. They should, at a minimum, provide you with these fundamentals; otherwise, you should probably move on.

• Real-time alerts you can act on (email, syslog, dashboard)—not just a static report.

• Automated network mapping so you can see conflicts across subnets.

• Integration with DHCP/DNS/IPAM for automated remediation.

• Scalability—can it handle 200 devices, or 200,000?

• Audit-ready reporting for when management asks, “Why did we go down last week?”

If a scanner doesn’t check those boxes, it’s probably just another tool that clogs your toolkit instead of helping.

The Payoff for Network Teams

Here’s the real-world upside you get from deploying a duplicate IP scanner:

• Less downtime: Conflicts are caught before they cascade into outages.

• Faster troubleshooting: No more ghost hunts across VLANs.

• Cleaner compliance posture: Easier reporting for ISO, PCI, HIPAA, or SOC audits.

• Better resource use: Free up hours of IT time that can go into projects instead of firefights.

Most importantly—it buys you credibility with your users. When they stop experiencing random connectivity blackouts, they notice.

Best Practices from the Field

A scanner is only as good as the way you use it. To get maximum ROI:

• Schedule recurring scans or enable continuous monitoring. Conflicts don’t happen on a schedule.

• Integrate with your existing stack—whether that’s SolarWinds, Open-AudIT, OPConfig, or custom scripts.

• Baseline your network so you know what “healthy” looks like. That way, when duplicates pop up, they stand out.

• Train your team—ensure the help desk knows how to escalate when an alert is received.

Why opAddress Stands Out

Plenty of tools can ping a subnet. But opAddress goes further because it’s not just a duplicate IP scanner—it’s a full IP address management (IPAM) platform.

With opAddress you get:

• Track duplicate IP detection with real-time alerts.

• Automated network mapping that gives you visibility across subnets.

• Tight integration with Open-AudIT and opConfig for a complete compliance and configuration picture.

• Enterprise scalability that works in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

• Audit-ready reporting out of the box.

That means you’re not just spotting conflicts—you’re preventing them from happening again, because you finally have a single source of truth for IP address allocation.

Duplicate IP conflicts are one of those “small” problems that can bring entire networks to a halt. And they’re only getting more common as networks grow more complex (Thank Big AI for that).

A duplicate IP scanner isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s table stakes for modern network management.

If you want to avoid conflicts instead of cleaning up after them, it’s time to put a purpose-built tool in place.

👉 See how opAddress can eliminate duplicate IP headaches before they hit your users.

Discover how this central communication system enables you to scale and decouple your communication in a distributed network architecture.

As businesses increasingly rely on distributed systems and microservices to serve their growing networks, effective communication between their different components becomes more challenging.

Enter message bus, or enterprise service bus: a communication system enabling seamless data exchange between network components to help you manage your distributed network.

In this blog, we’ll break down the concept of a message bus architecture, explaining how it works, its core features, available alternatives, and the benefits that a message bus solution like FirstWave opHA-MB brings to distributed systems.

Table of Contents

• What is message bus?
• Key components of a message bus architecture
• The benefits of message bus
• Common use cases for message bus technology
• Alternatives to message bus
• When to use which architecture
• The ultimate message bus solution: opHA Message Bus

What is message bus?

Imagine a bustling city with numerous neighborhoods, each representing a different application or service. To keep the city running smoothly, these neighborhoods need to exchange information efficiently.

A message bus acts like the city’s central transit system, ensuring messages are delivered to the right destinations without requiring any direct connections between them. In technical terms, the message bus enables different applications, services, or systems to communicate by transmitting messages through a shared infrastructure.

This setup ensures that each component remains independent for flexibility and scalability.

Key components of a message bus architecture

1. Producers (pollers)

Also known as peers, pollers collect data from various network devices and systems, generating messages that contain critical information about network performance, events, and statuses. These pollers can be scaled horizontally or vertically for efficient data collection across expansive networks.

2. Broker (message bus)

Serving as the central communication hub, the message bus ensures real-time synchronization among multiple pollers. It manages the routing of messages from producers to consumers, maintaining data integrity through message replication across three nodes, which allows the system to tolerate single-node failures.

3. Consumers (primary server and applications)

The primary server and associated applications function as consumers. They receive and process messages relayed by the message bus, providing users with a consolidated, real-time view of network health and performance. This setup enhances capabilities like event logging, monitoring, and the generation of intuitive dashboards and reports.

A message bus decouples communication, instead allowing senders and receivers to operate independently so network communication can happen asynchronously. This means users can manage distributed network systems via a central point that standardizes disparate communication styles. The result: a simple, integrated system.

The benefits of message bus

A message bus architecture is useful for businesses managing large-scale, distributed, multi-customer, and/or mission-critical networks, as data is freely available to travel between endpoints as needed.

• Multi-tenancy support: Especially for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), managing multiple clients efficiently is critical. A message bus architecture is designed for multi-tenancy, allowing MSPs to handle multiple customer environments within a single infrastructure.
• Fault tolerance: To ensure uninterrupted operations, many message buses (including opHA Message Bus) are built with fault tolerance and redundancy mechanisms that keep services running even if individual components fail.
• Flexibility: Scale your architecture with minimal configuration as decoupled components can operate and change independently. Easily handle high-traffic scenarios with the ability to distribute single messages across multiple consumers.
• Managed distribution: Message bus solves the problem of temporal decoupling, as peers and the primary do not need to be online simultaneously for the system to work. Messages can also be delivered in either single, group, or broadcast models.
• Reduced delays: Receive events to the primary system in real time, and process new events with minimal to no downtime.
• No API calls: Unlike traditional communication, where both services must be available simultaneously, a message bus can communicate at any time as well as rapidly push inventory updates.
• Reliability: Messages can be stored temporarily to prevent data loss, and retry mechanisms are supported if a consumer fails.
• Security: Authentication can be configured to control who sends and receives messages, and encryption can (and should) be incorporated to maintain secure communication.
• Monitoring: Track message flows for debugging, auditing, and performance monitoring.

Common use cases for message bus technology

1. Microservices architecture

In modern network management and cybersecurity environments, different services handle distinct functions—such as network monitoring, security alerts, performance analytics, and automation workflows—while seamlessly communicating with each other. A good message bus acts as the backbone for this communication, ensuring that services remain loosely coupled, scalable, and resilient in distributed architectures.

Network management benefits for microservices include:

• Seamless data flow: Ensures real-time data exchange between network monitoring tools, security systems, and reporting dashboards.
• Scalability: Allows IT teams and MSPs to add or modify monitoring components without affecting the entire system.
• Reduced latency and bottlenecks: Distributes network event data efficiently, preventing system slowdowns.
• Asynchronous processing: Enables automated alerts, log analysis, and device polling without delays.

2. Event-driven systems

Modern applications rely on real-time event processing to improve responsiveness and automation. A message bus is a core component of event-driven architectures, where events (e.g., user actions, system changes, external triggers) are published and consumed dynamically.

Where it’s useful:

• IoT networks: Devices publish sensor data, and analytics engines process it instantly.
• Cybersecurity monitoring: Suspicious activity is flagged and sent to security systems in real time.
• Finance and banking: Fraud detection systems react instantly to unusual transactions.

Alternatives to message bus

Alternatives to a message bus are usually point-to-point based, where services communicate directly rather than via a central interconnected point.

Point-to-point communication has its benefits, but it does limit your capabilities in that it silos data between sender and receiver, preventing cross-communication which can limit efficiency in more complex architectures.

But the good news is that you’re not just limited to one option; your distributed system can use a combination of communication styles for different functions to optimize its efficiency for your business.

APIs

APIs are a tightly coupled solution where each of your services need to know about each of your endpoints. With APIs, each service manages its own connections. This approach is ideal for simpler architectures or where latency isn’t a major consideration.

Pros:

• Suits synchronous interactions: APIs work when a service needs an immediate response and can’t be held or queued.
• Easy to implement: APIs are ideal in small-scale applications where adding a message bus would be overkill.
• Easy to integrate: APIs allow messages to be externally exposed to public or partner systems through simple calls.

Cons:

• Failure recovery challenges: Failure recovery mechanisms are harder to implement as services handle errors individually.
• Request bottlenecks: Too many requests can overload an API-driven system, leading to delays or failures.
• Limited scalability: API-driven systems are difficult to scale as each service directly communicates with others, increasing management complexity.
• Workflow issues: Performance and reliability suffer in asynchronous workflows like order processing or event-driven systems.
• High-throughput limitations: High-throughput systems that need decoupling and scalability can’t be supported, as each service manages its own connections.

Message queuing

A message queue is similar to a message bus, but they differ in how messages are routed and processed. Unlike a message bus, a message queue uses point-to-point communication and messages are prioritized by first in, first out. Once consumed, the message is simply removed from the queue.

Pros:

• Simple security: One-to-one messaging circumvents the need to implement encryption or similar security measures.
• Easy to implement: Ideal for task-based workflows, background jobs, or small applications with a clear producer-consumer relationship.
• Message durability: Messages can be persisted in the queue, ensuring they’re not lost even if the consumer is unavailable.

Cons:

• Limited communication: No built-in publish-subscribe model is available, limiting communication to one-to-one scenarios.
• No prioritization: There is no ability to prioritize or triage messages.
• Complex management: Managing message queues becomes more difficult at scale, and eventually totally inefficient.
• Potential for bottlenecks: With no ability to prioritize or triage messages, important messages can pile up in a queue if a consumer is overwhelmed or unavailable.

When to use which architecture

• APIs provide a tightly coupled solution, where each of your services need to know about each of your endpoints. If you use them on your own, you’re limited by point-to-point communication only, but APIs can form a useful part of a larger combination of communication architectures.
• Message queuing can be easy to implement for simple networks that manage only task-based workflows and point-to-point communication. But they’re not always easy to manage, as queue-based solutions typically require monitoring to ensure the queue doesn’t come too large, creating a bottleneck. They also require some form of orchestration to handle message processing.
• A message bus architecture is best suited for event-driven architectures, real-time updates, and systems where messages need to be broadcast to multiple consumers, e.g. notification systems, microservices communication. Message bus is also ideal for its ability to scale with your network as it grows over time, and integrates more complex or mission-critical communication systems.

If you have the time to implement and manage them all efficiently, you can use a message bus alongside other communication methods to expand your feature scope and optimize your setup for different use cases.

Some single providers will provide all of these functionalities in-house to make your journey even easier; for example, in addition to FirstWave’s opHA Message Bus solution, we also provide APIs to allow for message transfers, as well as integrate with queue-based message brokers such as RabbitMQ – all combined with hands-on expert support to make implementation easy.

Which is right for me?

To help you choose the best design (or combination of designs) for your business, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do we require or would we benefit from event-driven architecture?
• What level of decoupling do we need? Which services (if any) need the ability to communicate asynchronously?
• How critical is real-time communication? Do we need instant responses, near real-time event-driven updates, or delayed processing?
• What is our expected message volume and load on our services?
• How will we build resilience into our network? Do we need fault-tolerant messaging or constant availability?
• How important is scalability now, and what are our long-term growth plans?
• How do we plan to adopt AI or ML into our network, and how do we expect this to impact our network communication patterns?

The ultimate message bus solution: opHA Message Bus

opHA Message Bus (opHA-MB) is FirstWave’s own message bus solution, enabling you to simplify management of your distributed network systems with real-time data transfer across diverse and multi-tenanted environments.

This advanced network management solution acts as the central nervous system to your network to help you maintain optimal network performance, ensure resilience, and swiftly resolve the issues that come with complex network infrastructure.

How messages flow through opHA-MB

• Generating messages: Pollers collect data from network devices and generate messages containing key information.
• Publishing to the bus: These messages are sent to opHA-MB, which acts as the central broker.
• Smart routing: opHA-MB identifies which applications or services (consumers) need the data and directs messages accordingly.
• Processing and action: Consumers, such as the primary server, opCharts, and opEvents, receive the messages, process the data, and trigger the necessary actions, such as alerts or dashboard updates.

By keeping producers and consumers decoupled, this architecture allows each component to function independently. This improves flexibility, scalability, and resilience—ensuring efficient network management even as demands grow.

Features of opHA-MB

• Multi-tenancy: Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can easily manage multiple tenants with a single, configurable interface.
• Real-time communication and event management: Reduce data transfer times with real-time sync between multiple pollers, and enhance Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) with immediate event notifications from pollers to the primary server.
• Fault tolerance: Ensure data integrity with message replication across three nodes, tolerating single-node failures.
• Multi-server architecture: Distribute the server load to multiple pollers for efficient data collection and processing.
• Provisioning management: Simplify platform provisioning with push changes and new poller deployment at the click of a button.
• Scaling for high availability: Scale pollers horizontally or vertically with mirroring to improve availability, redundancy, and flexibility across your architecture.
• Integration with FirstWave products: opHA-MB is designed to work seamlessly with other FirstWave products, including opEvents and opCharts, to  enhance your network management capabilities.

Key benefits of opHA-MB

• Unparalleled network visibility: Gain instant insights into your network with immediate event updates, empowering proactive issue resolution.
• Enhanced network resilience: Minimize downtime and ensure uninterrupted service delivery with automated failover mechanisms and resilient event transfer.
• Event prioritization: When you use opHA-MB as part of your FirstWave suite of solutions, your data is prioritized by our software to enable intuitive event prioritization with real-time notifications, so you can address the events that matter most to your business.
• Streamlined network management: Reduce manual intervention and optimize network management tasks with automated event processing and centralized data management.
• Scalable and flexible architecture: Grow your architecture with your business and make changes as needed, with the ability to scale pollers horizontally or vertically.
• Reduced delays: Receive events to your primary system in real time to process new events with minimal to no downtime, as well as zero event loss in high-traffic environments.
• No API calls: Push inventory updates to multiple systems instantly and automatically.

Learn more about opHA-MB

Learn how you can improve your security posture with FirstWave’s powerful discovery and auditing tool.

As business networks grow and modernize, attack surfaces continue to increase, leaving more opportunities for bad actors to strike. According to Forrester, “two years ago, 63% [of organizations] said they had been breached at least once in the past year. This year, that number rose to 78%.”

Every October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the perfect opportunity to review and strengthen your security posture, preventing your business from becoming a statistic. The theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024 is “Cybersecurity is everyone’s business”. As part of this theme, governments and cybersecurity authorities are promoting four key focus areas:

1. Turn on multi-factor authentication
2. Keep devices and software up to date
3. Use strong and unique passwords
4. Recognize and report phishing.

Some of these focus areas are straightforward, but others—like keeping devices and software up to date—become more difficult to achieve as your network expands. In this blog, we’ll look at how using a comprehensive discovery, auditing, and compliance tool like Open-AudIT makes it easy for you to audit your devices and software from end to end – plus so much more.

About Open-AudIT

Do you really know everything that’s connected to your network beyond computers? Do you know who has access to what, and which software programs are installed on different devices? What if you could get all of this information in one tool?

Each device on your network forms part of your attack surface; the more you expand, the larger that attack surface becomes. But Open-AudIT gives you complete visibility and control of your network, enabling you to identify gaps in your network and secure it from end to end.

With intelligent discovery, auditing, and compliance features, Open-AudIT gives you immediate access to software licensing, configuration changes, non-authorized devices, capacity utilization, hardware warranty status reports, and more. Plus, the software is free to use (with the option to purchase additional feature sets).

How Open-AudIT improves your cybersecurity

You can use Open-AudIT to do more than just keep your devices and software up to date; you can use its intelligent features to meet a range of security controls and protect your network.

Accurate device discovery

Open-AudIT’s discovery feature identifies every device on your network, giving your security team full visibility and helping you meet system inventory controls. By keeping an accurate inventory of all your systems and devices you can effectively manage security risks, patch vulnerabilities, and respond to incidents quickly.

• Scheduled discoveries automatically discover all network-connected devices, including any unauthorized or unknown devices that could pose security risks, as well as identifying potential threats.
• You can also run an unscheduled discovery by setting the parameters of what you want to interrogate (for example, an IP address range) and running a search to see everything on your network that fits within these parameters.
• If you want to see everything, you can run a seed discovery. This is where Open-AudIT discovers all connected devices connected to a single “seed” router, continuing to run subsequent discoveries until you have a complete picture of every device on your network.

Extensive asset management reports

Open-AudIT collects massive amounts of data—including user permissions, software versions, serial numbers, and IP addresses—to give you access to over 80 types of reports, making it easy to meet asset management controls. Use these reports to maintain current device configuration records, keep security patches up to date, identify unapproved devices, quickly isolate compromised devices, and keep compliance with security policies.

Software license auditing

Outdated or unsupported software leaves you susceptible to cyberattacks. Open-AudIT keeps a detailed log of installed software to help you ensure that only authorized versions are present and that your systems are up to date.

Continuous monitoring for shadow IT

Open-AudIT helps you identify unauthorized devices or malicious activities on your network, known as shadow IT, through continuous network monitoring. Detecting these abnormalities is essential for ensuring only authorized devices are communicating over your network, meeting critical security controls and protecting your business.

Change tracking

Open-AudIT tracks changes to specific device attributes, including installed software, hardware, and settings, for easy auditing and change management. FirstWave’s opConfig also supports comprehensive configuration change tracking for network devices with a CLI-targeted inventory.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Open-AudIT gives you granular control over user permissions, helping you filter and limit access to sensitive network data within the platform. This reduces the risk of insider threats by ensuring that only authorized personnel can modify or view critical network information.

Configuration benchmarks and compliance

Open-AudIT can compare device, software, and user configurations against pre-defined benchmarks. This helps you spot deviations that could signal a vulnerability or misconfiguration, helping you resolve them quickly. Open-AudIT’s scheduled scans also help detect any changes in device configurations, ensuring compliance with security protocols and alerting users to potential risks before they escalate.

If you use Open-AudIT Enterprise, you can even set custom benchmarks to help you achieve compliance for both internal and industry security standards. You can either custom-define your own benchmarks based on your organization’s internal compliance requirements, or you can access a huge variety of benchmark lists for different industries – like HIPAA, NIST SP 800-171, or PCI DSS.

FirstWave: a leader in cybersecurity

Since 2004, FirstWave has been delivering one of the only cybersecurity solutions of its kind to global customers. Today, we’re a market leader with over 150,000 customers worldwide.

Where competitors focus on getting more customers and generating more revenue, we focus on optimizing our products and supporting our end-users. Many of the developers on our small team have been at FirstWave and in the cybersecurity industry for many years; some have even been with us since our inception. As a result our product suite is not only rich in features, but also comes with unmatched support from our dedicated team.

It doesn’t end with Open-AudIT

If you want to take your network security a step further, FirstWave helps businesses fortify their security postures with other solutions like:

• CyberCision™: Our advanced security management platform allows service providers to grow revenue by provisioning cybersecurity services at a reduced cost. CyberCision’s email security and web protection features can also help protect your organization from phishing – another key focus area of this year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
• STM (Secure Traffic Manager): This intelligence-driven platform provides real-time traffic visibility and control, so you can turn off traffic from bad links and improve Quality of Service (QoS).
• NMIS (Network Management Information System): NMIS offers comprehensive network management and handles faults, performance, and configurations with ease. There are several NMIS modules that can improve your cybersecurity:
  • opConfig: Create baseline configuration rules on any device to support security protection and compliance. Change standards across devices automatically, including running super user commands, to make changes based on insights gleaned from Open-AudIT reports.
  • opEvents: Capture security events and set up custom alerts to notify you in real time. Link opEvents to opConfig to create automated actions in response to certain events.
  • opCharts: Access everything you could want to know about your network environment through a single pane of glass. Use dashboards, maps, and charts to visualize and combine multiple data sets.

Open-AudIT is used by over 130,000 organizations worldwide for good reason: No other IT auditing software can discover as much as Open-AudIT. There’s no better time than Cybersecurity Awareness Month to review and upgrade your cybersecurity posture, and by integrating Open-AudIT into your enterprise network, your business can proactively protect itself from cyberthreats.

Download Open-AudIT

Get more info on Cybersecurity Awareness Month (Australia)

By activating the Virtual Operator feature in the NMIS opConfig module, IT managers can empower their team to proactively address common network issues, ensuring optimal performance, security, and compliance.

The virtual operator can:

• Troubleshoot common issues automatically. No more sifting through logs or waiting for expert assistance. They can diagnose and resolve common network problems instantly.
• Always follow best practice procedures for network security. Because they follow a script that you create, compliance with industry standards and regulations is pre-defined by you, removing human error and leaving you confident in your network’s safety.
• Help your team move from reactive to proactive network management. Reduce errors, increase performance, and free up valuable time for strategic initiatives.

The Evolution of Network Operations – from Manual to Virtual

The landscape of network operations has been undergoing a radical transformation.

Traditionally, managing networks involved a predominantly manual approach, relying heavily on human expertise and intervention to address issues, configure devices, and ensure optimal performance. Human error, time-consuming processes, and the inability to scale effectively in the face of growing network complexity posed significant challenges to traditional network management practices.

In the past decade, network monitoring and management platforms have become more intelligent, with advances in big data providing greater insights into a network environment, how and when it is accessed, what devices are used and when, which services are performing optimally, and which services are degrading.

According to the Gartner Market Guide to Network Automation, while more than 65% of enterprise networking activities are performed manually across SME’s, a growing percentage of large enterprises automate more than half of their network activities.

Firstwave Cloud Technology has been at the forefront of this new era of machine intelligence, gathering and analysing network data to provide advanced anomaly detection and predictive analytics that allows operators to proactively manage infrastructure and devices to ensure a healthy and predictable network environment.

With the introduction of the Virtual Operator, this machine intelligence goes a level deeper, allowing the NMIS platform to take action on insights and allowing operators to script a series of activities that the operator can perform at the touch of a button.

This article delves more deeply into the concept of the Virtual Operator, exploring its benefits and potential impact on an organisation’s network automation strategy.  We will examine how automation, through the implementation of a Virtual Operator, is reimagining network administration, driving efficiency, enhancing security, and unlocking new levels of performance and insights.

What is the Virtual Operator?

The Virtual Operator, is a software agent designed to automate repetitive tasks, optimise network performance, and provide intelligent insights. It functions as a rule-based engine that learns from historical data, network configurations, and best practices, allowing it to make informed decisions and take proactive actions to maintain network stability and efficiency.

Think of a Virtual Operator as a highly specialised AI assistant tailored for network administration. It acts like an extension of the network team, taking on the mundane and repetitive tasks, freeing up human engineers to focus on more strategic and complex challenges.

Benefits of implementing a Virtual Operator

The implementation of a Virtual Operator offers several key benefits to network administration teams:

1. Human Resource Optimisation

By automating routine tasks, the Virtual Operator can free up engineers to focus on more strategic and complex challenges. This shift allows teams to maximise human talent, enabling them to tackle innovation, problem-solving, and the implementation of new technologies.

2. Improved Network Efficiency and Performance

The Virtual Operator in conjunction with the broader opConfig and opEvents module can continuously monitor network performance, identify potential issues, and proactively take corrective actions. This pre-emptive approach ensures optimal network performance, minimising downtime, and maximising resource utilisation.

3. Enhanced Security and Compliance

The Virtual Operator can implement and enforce security policies, detect anomalies, and respond to security threats in real-time. This automated approach strengthens network security, improves compliance with industry regulations, and reduces the risk of security breaches.

4. Data-Driven Decision Making

Virtual Operators leverage vast amounts of network data to gain valuable insights and optimise network configurations. These insights empower network teams to make informed decisions based on real-time data, leading to more effective resource allocation and network optimisation.

Use Case:  Managed Service Providers

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) often manage multiple client networks simultaneously. This can be a resource-intensive task, particularly when dealing with routine maintenance and troubleshooting. The Virtual Operator offers a solution to this challenge by automating many of the routine tasks that MSPs typically perform.

For example, a MSP can use the Virtual Operator to automate the process of applying security patches across multiple client networks. The Virtual Operator can execute the necessary commands to apply the patches, run tests to ensure that the patches have been applied correctly, and report any issues that arise. This not only reduces the workload for the MSP’s engineers but also ensures that the patches are applied consistently and without errors.

Use Case: Hybrid Networks

The Virtual Operator simplifies the management of hybrid networks by automating the tasks required to maintain connectivity and performance.

For example, the Virtual Operator can automatically adjust network configurations to optimise performance as workloads shift between on-premise and cloud environments. It can also monitor network traffic for potential issues and make adjustments in real-time to prevent disruptions. This level of automation ensures that hybrid networks operate smoothly and efficiently, even as conditions change .

How Businesses can expand their Network Automation beyond the Virtual Operator

The adoption of the Virtual Operator for network administration presents a key stepping stone towards the future of network automation for IT teams.  How can a business expand the effectiveness of Virtual Operator and what new developments can we expect to see as network automation technology further evolves?

1. Increased Automation and Self-Healing Networks

Use of the Virtual Operator alongside other modules such as opEvents, opTrend and Open-Audit will drive further automation in network management, eventually enabling self-healing networks that can identify and resolve issues without human intervention. This will lead to more resilient, reliable, and efficient network infrastructure.

2. Enhanced Network Intelligence and Analytics

The use of the Virtual Operator to routinely check network health will play a critical role in advancing network intelligence, enabling teams to gain deeper insights into network performance, security threats, and user behaviour. This will empower teams to make more informed decisions and proactively optimise their networks.

3. Evolution of Network Administration Roles

Eventually, the use of network automation tools such as the Virtual Operator will transform the role of network administrators and engineers, shifting their focus from routine tasks to more strategic and creative activities. They will become more involved in AI model development and instructional writing, data analysis, and the design of intelligent network solutions.

Conclusion

The Virtual Operator represents a significant step forward in network automation, leveraging the power of AI to enhance network performance, optimise operations, and free up human resources for more strategic tasks. As AI and automation continue to advance, features like the Virtual Operator will play an increasingly crucial role in enabling more intelligent, efficient, and resilient network infrastructure.

Reference:

Gartner 2023 Market Guide to Network Automation

https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4913231

Download Open-AudIT

Visit our website to download the latest version. Select the Linux or Windows option, and download the binary.

Open-AudIT is installed on-premises. You can also use the FirstWave Virtual Machine if you prefer, and get all the FirstWave monitoring applications installed and ready to use.

How to install for Windows

Prerequisites

• For Windows, the following distributions are supported (64-bit only):
  • Windows Server 2016 and up.
• If you don’t already have NMAP, go to nmap.org to download the latest NMAP binary. Right-click the downloaded .exe file, select Run as Administrator, and run the installation wizard with default installation settings applied.
• If you don’t already have it, install the latest Visual C runtime.
• Windows 10 and 11 are not supported for Open-AudIT Server (they are fine as discovered machines).

Installing for SUSE? Get installation details here.

Claim your free licenses

• Open your web browser, navigate to http://YOUR_SERVER/open-audit/, and log in.
• Fill out the form at http://YOUR_SERVER/open-audit/index.php/configuration/license_string to activate your free 100-device Professional license.

Add your credentials

Open-AudIT can handle a variety of credential types, including the standard SNMP, Windows, and SSH types.

• In the Open-AudIT dashboard, navigate to Discover > Credentials > Create Credentials.
• Add your credential details and click Submit.
• Repeat this process as many times as needed to add your desired device credentials to Open-AudIT.

If you don’t have the credentials for a device on your network you will still see the device in Open-AudIT, but data retrieval will be limited.

Now, you can add a discovery!

Start discovering

• From the Open-AudIT dashboard, navigate to Discover > Discoveries > Create Discoveries.
• Add a name and the subnet for your discovery. Typically most users use a /24 network ,e.g. 192.168.1.0/24.
• Click the Execute button on the discovery details page.
• Click the Refresh button at any time to update the logs as the discovery progresses.
• Repeat this process as many times as needed to add all desired discoveries.
• On the Discoveries dashboard, you’ll now see all your listed devices. To view detailed information on a discovered device, navigate to Manage > Devices > List Devices.
• Click the eye icon under the Details column for any device to explore the extensive data Open-AudIT has collected for it.

After adding your credentials and running your discoveries, you’ll notice your home dashboard now displays a variety of charts that give you deeper insights into your network.

Done!

Want a visual run-through? You can watch the entire process in more detail below.

Happy discovering!

Learn more about Open-AudIT

Open-AudIT YouTube playlist

Open-AudIT Community Wiki

Chat to our Support team

In managing computer networks, keeping services running and minimizing disruptions is crucial. One important way to measure how well network managers and operators handle problems is through Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).

So, What is Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)?

MTTR is a key performance indicator used in network management to quantify the average time it takes to resolve a network issue or outage from the moment it is detected.

This metric encompasses the entire process, from initial problem identification (when a device such as a router, switch, or server goes down or starts experiencing issues) through to the restoration of normal service. MTTR is calculated by taking the total time spent on resolving all incidents within a specific period and dividing it by the number of incidents.

In simpler terms, MTTR provides a clear picture of how long your network is out of action during a typical incident and how quickly your team can bring everything back to normal. It’s a reflection of the efficiency and effectiveness of your incident response processes.

Why MTTR Matters for Network Managers and Operators

MTTR is more than a mere number; it serves as a direct indicator of the health of your network management practices. Here’s why it’s so crucial:

1. Minimizing Downtime: Networks are the backbone of any organization, and every minute of network downtime can result in lost productivity, customer dissatisfaction, and revenue loss. MTTR helps network managers understand how quickly they can respond to and resolve issues, thus minimizing downtime and its associated impacts.
2. Operational Efficiency: A lower MTTR indicates a streamlined, efficient response process. It reflects well on the team’s capability to detect, diagnose, and fix issues quickly. This significantly enhances the network’s reliability, instilling a heightened level of confidence and bolstering the team’s reputation within the organization.
3. Customer Satisfaction (this is the most imporant one): In today’s fast-paced digital environment, customers expect near-instantaneous service. A quick resolution time keeps customers happy by ensuring that disruptions are brief and service is restored promptly.
4. Resource Management: MTTR can also help in assessing how effectively resources are being used during incident response. A consistently high MTTR might indicate bottlenecks or inefficiencies that need to be addressed, such as outdated tools or a lack of adequate training for the team.

What is a Good MTTR?

The definition of a “good” MTTR can vary depending on the industry, the complexity of the network, and the nature of the incidents. However, there are some general benchmarks that network managers can consider:

• Industry Standards: In many industries, a good MTTR is typically under 4 hours. However, for high-stakes environments, such as financial services or healthcare, MTTR might need to be even lower, often measured in minutes.
• Historical Performance: Your historical data is a great baseline. If your average MTTR has been 6 hours, bringing it down to 4 hours could be a significant improvement. The key is consistent improvement over time.
• SLAs and Customer Expectations: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) often dictate the acceptable MTTR for your organization. These agreements are usually based on customer expectations, which can vary greatly. Meeting or exceeding these SLAs should be the target.
• Comparative Analysis: Look at similar organizations within your industry. Benchmarking against peers can provide insight into where your MTTR stands and what might be achievable.

Conclusion

MTTR stands as a critical measure that network managers and operators need to monitor and improve. It acts as a clear signal of how rapidly your team can recover from network issues, affecting everything from operational efficiency to customer satisfaction. By aiming for a reduced MTTR, network teams are not only able to improve their service reliability but also bolster their overall network management approach. Ultimately, a successful MTTR is one that meets or surpasses your organization’s and its customers’ expectations, while continually striving for quicker and more effective resolutions.