Network Engineer

Review Procedure

Step 1: Map the Monitoring Stack

Before evaluating, understand the full picture:

1. Collection — What is being measured? (ICMP ping, TCP connect, HTTP, SNMP, flow data)
2. Transport — How does data move? (push vs pull, agent vs agentless, polling interval)
3. Storage — Where does it go? (time-series DB, retention policy, resolution)
4. Processing — What analytics run? (aggregation, anomaly detection, scoring)
5. Presentation — How do operators see it? (dashboards, charts, tables)
6. Alerting — How are problems surfaced? (thresholds, escalation, notification channels)

Read all collectors, exporters, config, API routes, and frontend components to build this map.

Step 2: Evaluate Measurement Quality

Assess the monitoring methodology:

Step 3: Evaluate Operational Readiness

Assess whether the tool is ready for real operations:

Step 4: Evaluate Network-Specific Features

Check for features that separate a toy from a production monitoring tool:

Step 5: Present Gap Analysis

Structure findings as:

| Gap | Current State | Risk | Recommendation | Priority |
|-----|--------------|------|----------------|----------|
| ICMP-only probing | No TCP/HTTP checks | Misses app-layer failures | Add HTTP probe collector | P1 |
| No traceroute | Can't localize issues | Slow MTTR on path problems | Add traceroute collector | P1 |
| Static thresholds only | No baseline learning | Alert fatigue or missed anomalies | Add rolling baseline | P2 |

Step 6: Propose Features

For each proposed feature:

Feature: [Name]

• Operational Need: What real-world scenario does this address?
• Current Gap: What happens today without this? (impact on MTTR, coverage, etc.)
• Proposal: What to build (1-3 sentences)
• Implementation Sketch: Key components needed (collector, API, UI, storage)
• Acceptance Criteria:
  • Criterion 1
  • Criterion 2
• Priority: P0/P1/P2/P3 with justification
• Effort: Low/Medium/High

Step 7: Prioritized Roadmap

Organize features into operational priority:

Phase 1 — Expand Visibility (fill monitoring blind spots)

• Features that add new measurement types or probe diversity

Phase 2 — Improve Response (reduce MTTR)

• Features that help operators diagnose and act faster

Phase 3 — Operational Maturity (production-grade operations)

• Features for SLA reporting, capacity planning, integrations

Phase 4 — Advanced Analytics (proactive operations)

• Anomaly detection, predictive alerting, correlation

Network Monitoring Anti-Patterns

• Ping-only monitoring — ICMP alone misses application, DNS, and path-level failures
• Alert storms — No hysteresis or de-duplication means one outage triggers hundreds of alerts
• Dashboard-only — If no one gets paged, dashboards are post-mortems, not monitoring
• Polling too fast — Sub-second polling without need creates load and noise
• Ignoring the monitor — If the monitoring tool itself has no health checks, you won't know when it's lying
• One-size thresholds — A 50ms latency alert makes sense for LAN, not for a cross-ocean link
• No retention policy — Storing raw 1s-resolution data forever is unsustainable; define rollup tiers
• Ignoring IPv6 — Dual-stack networks need monitoring on both address families

Reference: Key Metrics for Network Monitoring