scan network

IT management scans network through management statistics such as throughput, usage, percentage of loss, and user complaints. Expectations and "quality problems" from an IT perspective tend to be more absolute and measurable. (For example, the one-way latency of more than 150 ms is unacceptable for a voice call, or a transaction refresh time for a bank teller application must be fewer than 5 seconds.)

Service providers formalize these expectations within service-level agreements (SLAs), which clearly state the acceptable bounds of network performance. Corporate enterprise networks typically do not have such formal SLAs, but they nevertheless manage their networks on some form of measurement and monitoring. Some enterprise networks indeed might use SLAs of various levels of formality between the IT department and the customer departments that they scan network for.