|  | 7.2 | Monitoring the Network
| 7.2.2 | Connection monitoring
One of the most basic forms of connection monitoring takes place every day on a network. The process of users logging on to the network will verify that connections are working properly or the networking department will soon be contacted. This is not the most efficient or preferable method of connection monitoring available. Simple programs are available that will allow the administrator to enter a list of host IP addresses and these addresses will be periodically pinged. If there is a connection problem, the program will alert the administrator by the ping output. This is a very inefficient and primitive way of monitoring the network but it will work better that nothing at all. Another aspect of this type of monitoring is that it only determines that somewhere between the monitoring station and the target device there is a communication breakdown. The fault could be a bad router, switch, network segment, or the actual host might be down. The ping test only says that the connection is down, not where it is down. Checking all the hosts on a WAN using this type of monitoring uses many resources. If the network has 3000 hosts on it, pinging all of the network devices and hosts can use a great deal of system resources. A better way is to ping just a few of the important hosts, servers, routers, and switches to verify their connectivity. Ping tests will not give give true data unless workstations are always left on. Again, this method of monitoring should be used only if there is no other method available.