Symptoms : Network utilization levels are above threshold

Impact : Medium

Slow SQL responses will degrade the user experience, resulting in poor efficiency of your organization’s operations.

Expected behavior :

There is no standard metric for network activity. Many aspects of the environment will affect network load.

This threshold measures usage level in percentage of network bandwidth transfer from / to server.

Possible causes

High network traffic – system   Priority : Medium
Unusual levels of traffic may be coming from external operations (backups, restores etc from networked data stores)
Recommended action :
Where possible, concentrate non-SQL Server related activities onto a separate network. Also, schedule high-volume activities to time frames of lowest user demand.

SQL queries with high disk I/O requiring data traffic to storage  Priority : Medium
This problem is specifically relevant to environments with networked storage.
Recommended action :
If possible, log storage disks should be physically linked to the server, or over a separate network. To otherwise minimize traffic, see our recommendations regarding page file optimization here.

Network errors or inefficient network structure  Priority : Medium
Faulty or inadequate hardware components, such as routers, controllers etc. with low bandwidth capabilities can significantly slow down traffic.
Recommended action :
Investigate all hardware components, with your Network Management team.
See our recommendations regarding network latency here.

Background

This measure of traffic is closely associated with network latency. See here.