Cloud Network Performance Monitoring

Table of contents

Cloud Network Perforamance Monitoring at a Glance What is Cloud Network Performance Monitoring?How Cloud NPM Differs from Traditional NPM Cloud Network Performance Monitoring Metrics Monitoring Cloud Network Metrics with Kentik Cloud Network Monitoring KPIs From Appliances to Cloud-Native Telemetry How Kentik Approaches Cloud Network Performance Monitoring Related Network Performance Monitoring Topics FAQs About Cloud Network Performance Monitoring What is cloud monitoring?What is Cloud Network Performance Monitoring (Cloud NPM)?How does Cloud NPM differ from traditional NPM?How do enterprises monitor connectivity across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud simultaneously?What cloud network performance metrics should I monitor?How do I monitor latency, loss, and jitter between on-prem and cloud instances?How do I figure out where along the internet path the problem is happening?What KPIs should a cloud network monitoring program track?Why do traditional packet-capture appliance approaches struggle in public cloud environments?What categories of tools are used for cloud network performance monitoring?What are the best tools for cloud network performance monitoring?How does Kentik help troubleshoot cloud connectivity problems?What role does AI play in cloud network performance monitoring?Which cloud providers does Kentik support for cloud network monitoring?How do I set SLOs for network performance and track compliance?Take the Next Step with Kentik

Enterprises now run applications across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS environments, deliver digital experiences to users distributed across the internet, and depend on networks that span on-prem data centers, multiple public clouds, and SaaS edges. That distribution has fundamentally changed what network performance monitoring has to do — and what kinds of tools and telemetry can actually do it.

Cloud Network Perforamance Monitoring at a Glance

Cloud Network Performance Monitoring (Cloud NPM) measures, diagnoses, and optimizes network service quality across cloud, multicloud, and hybrid environments.
Core metrics: bandwidth, throughput, latency, loss, jitter, and error rates (TCP retransmissions, out-of-order packets, etc.).
What makes it different from traditional NPM: instrumentation (cloud-native telemetry plus lightweight agents instead of SPAN-based appliances), storage and analysis (horizontally scalable SaaS instead of appliance-bound), and scope (multi-region cloud, on-prem, WAN, and the internet path treated as one continuous fabric).
How Kentik approaches it: synthetic tests between cloud and on-prem agents, cloud flow telemetry, hop-by-hop Path View, multi-cloud topology, and Kentik AI for natural-language investigation.

What is Cloud Network Performance Monitoring?

Cloud Network Performance Monitoring, often called Cloud NPM, is the application of network performance monitoring practices to cloud, multicloud, and hybrid cloud environments. It continuously measures, diagnoses, and optimizes a network’s service quality so that performance aligns with service-level agreements (SLAs) and user expectations across regions, providers, and the internet paths that connect them.

Cloud NPM is a discipline, not a single product category. If you are comparing specific monitoring products to buy or evaluate, see our roundup of the best network monitoring tools for 2026. This article focuses on the practice itself: what to measure, how cloud changes the monitoring model, and how modern platforms deliver it.

By tracking metrics such as bandwidth, throughput, latency, loss, jitter, and error rates, Cloud NPM lets network teams identify issues before users feel them, optimize efficiency across regions and providers, and make data-driven decisions about routing, capacity, and architecture.

Kentik in brief: Kentik is a network intelligence platform that delivers Cloud Network Performance Monitoring (Cloud NPM) across hybrid and multicloud environments by combining synthetic performance tests (latency, loss, jitter, and path changes) with cloud traffic telemetry (flow logs) and device/interface metrics. Deploy lightweight agents on-prem and in cloud instances to run tests between AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, then use hop-by-hop Path View to pinpoint where performance degrades along the route. Kentik also provides multi-cloud topology visibility and a Connectivity Checker to troubleshoot blocked paths, plus Kentik AI to accelerate investigations with natural-language questions.

Why Cloud Network Optimization Really Matters in 2025

Cloud optimization is crucial to delivering software with lean infrastructure operating margins and enhanced customer experiences.

How Cloud NPM Differs from Traditional NPM

Cloud NPM is not just traditional NPM running in a different location. The instrumentation points, the storage and analysis model, and even the scope of “the network” have all changed.

Dimension	Traditional NPM	Cloud NPM
Instrumentation	SPAN/TAP into physical or virtual packet-capture appliances; PCAP probes on router/switch span ports	Cloud-native telemetry (VPC flow logs, cloud router metrics) plus lightweight server agents and synthetic test agents
Storage and analysis	Appliance-bound; finite local storage; vertical scale	Horizontally scalable SaaS backend; big-data analytics on unsummarized data
Scope	Single data center perimeter	Multi-region cloud, on-prem, WAN, and internet path treated as one continuous fabric
Diagnostic model	Reactive packet inspection on the wire	Mix of flow telemetry, synthetic testing, path visibility, and AI-assisted investigation

These shifts are why a Cloud NPM strategy can’t be assembled by repointing legacy probes at a cloud VPC. The instrumentation has to live where the workloads do, and the analytics have to scale with the traffic.

Cloud Network Performance Monitoring Metrics

Cloud NPM requires multiple types of measurement data on which engineers can perform diagnoses and analyses to extract performance insights. Example categories include:

Bandwidth: the raw versus available maximum rate that information can be transferred through points of the network or along a network path.
Throughput: how much information is being or has been transferred.
Latency: network delays from the perspective of clients, servers, and applications.
Loss and jitter: packet loss percentages and variation in packet arrival times — critical for voice, video, and real-time application performance.
Errors: raw numbers and percentages of errors such as bit errors, TCP retransmissions, and out-of-order packets.

Network managers face a real challenge: legacy NPM approaches were built for centralized data centers running monolithic applications, and they don’t match hybrid cloud and distributed application realities. New approaches are required for effective cloud network monitoring. Learn more about Kentik’s cloud network monitoring solutions.

Monitoring Cloud Network Metrics with Kentik

In this short video, Phil Gervasi demonstrates how Kentik can be used to monitor cloud network performance metrics among multiple cloud instances using a lightweight synthetic test agent that can be deployed on-premises (in a datacenter or colo) as well as in public cloud instances.

In this way, key network performance metrics including loss, latency, and jitter can be monitored between on-prem resources and public cloud instances. This technique can also be used to monitor performance between and among public cloud services (for example, between AWS, Azure, and GCP resources). Additionally, Kentik’s Path View provides a hop-by-hop visualization of the internet path between instances, along with any problems along the way.

Hey. I’m Phil Gervasi. And in this super short video, I want to show you a quick and easy way to see network performance metrics among multiple cloud instances. So here I am in the Synthetics dashboard, and, basically, our synthetic tests are built with lightweight test agents that can be deployed almost anywhere. So you can deploy them on prem in your data center or colo, but also in your public cloud instances. So that way, you can test for things like loss, latency, and jitter and going up the stack from there, between your on-prem resources and public cloud instances. But the key here is that you can deploy these test agents in multiple public clouds and test for things like loss, latency, and jitter, and the path in between, among your public cloud instances. So in between AWS and Azure, for example. So scrolling down, you could see I have a small mesh of tests running for you. And as an example, this is a test here running between AWS US West 1, and it looks like GCP US Central 1. Now you can see everything is green. All is well. That’s good. But we can drill down into the details and learn more. So in the upper right, I can adjust my time range. And here at the top, we see rolling inbound and outbound traffic. Under that, we see average latency over time. And below that, we see average packet loss and then jitter. Now everything looks good here. But if there was a spike in any of these, it would, of course, fire an alert, which would be tied to your ticketing system. Now here in the upper left, and this is important, we can see that we can look at the path view as well. And if I click on it, we can see a hop-by-hop breakdown of the path over the internet between, in this case, my AWS instance and my Google instance, including any problems along the way. To learn more, visit kentik.com/cloud, and, of course, you can always reach out to your Kentik representative as well.

Cloud Network Monitoring KPIs

Metrics measure what the network is doing. KPIs measure how well the team and the platform are meeting goals. A mature Cloud NPM program tracks operational and security KPIs that connect monitoring data to business outcomes:

Mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time between failures
Production incidents by application and team
Security lapses such as open ports and IAM failures
Security incidents per month by team

Tracking these alongside raw performance metrics turns Cloud NPM into a feedback loop that improves reliability over time, rather than just a dashboard of green and red lights.

From Appliances to Cloud-Native Telemetry

Legacy network performance monitoring approaches were architected on pre-cloud assumptions: centralized data centers running monolithic applications, with a perimeter where you could install a probe. Traditional NPM solutions used an appliance deployment model — a PCAP probe with one or more interfaces connected to router or switch SPAN ports, or to an intervening packet broker device such as those offered by Gigamon or Ixia. The appliance recorded packets passing across the interface into memory and then into longer-term storage. Virtual probes can be used in virtualized data centers, but they are still dependent on network links in one form or another.

With application components increasingly distributed across cloud environments and users located across the internet, traditional NPM methods of data ingestion break down. Public clouds often don’t expose SPAN ports for packet capture, and the sheer scale of cloudified application communications makes appliance-based storage and analysis models impractical due to pre-cloud computing constraints.

A cloud-friendly and highly scalable SaaS model for network performance monitoring splits the monitoring function from the storage and analysis functions. Monitoring is accomplished by deploying lightweight software agents that export statistics gathered on servers and open-source proxies such as HAProxy and NGINX, alongside cloud-native telemetry sources like VPC flow logs. Cloud visibility tools give IT teams, network engineers, and security analysts a way to understand what is happening inside cloud environments without depending on physical instrumentation.

Statistics are sent to a SaaS repository that scales horizontally to store unsummarized data and provides big-data analytics for alerting, diagnostics, and other use cases. While host-based performance metric export doesn’t offer the full granularity of raw PCAP, it provides a highly scalable and cost-effective method for ubiquitously gathering, retaining, and analyzing key performance data — complementing PCAP rather than replacing it.

How Kentik Approaches Cloud Network Performance Monitoring

Kentik is the network intelligence platform built for the dynamic, distributed nature of cloud infrastructures. It is designed for network professionals who need to monitor and manage performance across public, private, hybrid, and multicloud environments from a single platform.

Kentik’s multi-cloud observability solution combines flow telemetry, synthetic testing, device metrics, and topology mapping so teams can understand and optimize cloud traffic, connectivity, and performance across AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It offers an interactive, context-rich visualization of cloud and data center infrastructures, enabling rapid identification of connectivity issues, compliance and security risks, and inter-region data exchange. Kentik also accelerates cloud migration with real-time traffic data and synthetic testing insights, and its Connectivity Checker provides instant, detailed analysis of connectivity problems — speeding resolution when something breaks between regions, VPCs, or providers.

Underneath these capabilities, Kentik scales as a cloud-native SaaS platform, gives deep visibility from high-level bandwidth and throughput down to granular latency and error rates, integrates with existing cloud services and on-premises infrastructure, and applies big-data analytics to turn raw network data into actionable insight. Kentik AI extends that further, letting NetOps professionals and non-experts alike ask questions in natural language and get immediate answers about current status or historical performance.

Explore the specifics by Kentik capability area:

Multi-cloud observability — unified visibility across cloud and on-prem
Kentik Synthetics — active testing for latency, loss, jitter, and path changes
Kentik NMS — next-generation network monitoring system
Kentik AI — natural-language network investigation

FAQs About Cloud Network Performance Monitoring

What is cloud monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is the practice of observing cloud infrastructure and services to maintain performance, availability, and reliability using telemetry (metrics, logs, and events), dashboards, and alerts. For the network layer of cloud monitoring, Kentik focuses on connectivity and performance across hybrid and multicloud environments using flow telemetry plus synthetic tests and path visibility.

What is Cloud Network Performance Monitoring (Cloud NPM)?

Cloud Network Performance Monitoring applies network performance monitoring practices to cloud networks, including hybrid and multicloud environments, to measure, diagnose, and optimize service quality. Kentik supports Cloud NPM by monitoring bandwidth, throughput, latency, and errors and by testing real paths between cloud and on-prem resources.

How does Cloud NPM differ from traditional NPM?

Traditional NPM relies on packet-capture appliances connected to SPAN ports inside a data center perimeter; Cloud NPM relies on cloud-native telemetry, lightweight agents, and synthetic tests distributed across regions and providers, with a horizontally scalable SaaS backend for storage and analysis. Kentik supports the cloud model with synthetic agents, cloud flow telemetry, and hop-by-hop Path View across hybrid and multicloud environments.

How do enterprises monitor connectivity across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud simultaneously?

Deploy lightweight synthetic test agents in multiple clouds (and optionally on-prem), run a mesh of tests between those agents to measure latency, loss, and jitter, and use hop-by-hop path views to see where degradation occurs. Kentik supports this approach through Kentik Synthetics agents and Path View, which can test between AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources in one monitoring mesh.

What cloud network performance metrics should I monitor?

Core Cloud NPM metrics include bandwidth, throughput, latency, and error rates (such as retransmissions and out-of-order packets). Kentik helps by monitoring these metrics and correlating them with synthetic tests so teams can distinguish “network path problem” from “endpoint or application problem.”

How do I monitor latency, loss, and jitter between on-prem and cloud instances?

Use synthetic tests between agents placed on-prem and in cloud instances, then trend latency, loss, and jitter over time and alert on regressions. Kentik supports this with deployable synthetic agents and dashboards that track these metrics between on-prem and cloud.

How do I figure out where along the internet path the problem is happening?

Use hop-by-hop path visibility (traceroute-style) so you can see which hop or segment correlates with latency or loss spikes. Kentik provides Path View to visualize the route between endpoints and highlight where problems appear.

What KPIs should a cloud network monitoring program track?

Operational KPIs commonly include MTTR (or time between failures), production incidents by application and team, and security-related KPIs such as open ports, IAM failures, and incidents by team. Kentik supports these outcomes by improving cross-cloud visibility and speeding investigation and troubleshooting workflows.

Why do traditional packet-capture appliance approaches struggle in public cloud environments?

Public clouds often don’t provide the same instrumentation points as data centers (for example, SPAN ports), and the scale and distribution of cloud traffic makes appliance-based collection and storage difficult. Kentik supports cloud-friendly monitoring by using scalable SaaS analytics plus lightweight agents and cloud-native telemetry sources.

What categories of tools are used for cloud network performance monitoring?

Cloud-friendly monitoring tools generally fall into a few categories: cloud-native provider tools (AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations) for single-cloud visibility; full-stack observability platforms (Datadog, New Relic) when network is one of many concerns; and dedicated network intelligence platforms for deep cross-cloud, hybrid, and internet-path visibility. Kentik fits the third category and uses cloud flow telemetry plus synthetic tests and analytics designed for hybrid and multicloud environments.

What are the best tools for cloud network performance monitoring?

The “best” tool depends on your environment, team, and the depth of network visibility you need — provider-native, full-stack observability, and dedicated network intelligence platforms each have different strengths. For a side-by-side comparison across enterprise, cloud, MSP, and open-source categories, see our roundup of the best network monitoring tools for 2026. Kentik supports this category by combining synthetic testing, cloud flow telemetry, multi-cloud topology, and Path View across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

How does Kentik help troubleshoot cloud connectivity problems?

Troubleshooting requires identifying whether connectivity is blocked by routing, gateways, or policy controls (such as security groups and NACLs), and pinpointing where the block occurs. Kentik supports this with Connectivity Checker and multi-cloud topology visibility to help teams locate where connectivity is failing and why.

What role does AI play in cloud network performance monitoring?

AI can reduce toil by helping teams ask questions in natural language, guiding multi-step investigations, and summarizing “what changed” with evidence. Kentik supports this with Kentik AI, which helps users get answers about current status and historical performance without needing to write complex queries.

Which cloud providers does Kentik support for cloud network monitoring?

Cloud monitoring programs typically need consistent visibility across the major providers and hybrid environments. Kentik supports multi-cloud visibility across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as part of its multi-cloud observability approach.

How do I set SLOs for network performance and track compliance?

Start by choosing SLIs that reflect experience (latency, loss, jitter, DNS response time, HTTP/API response time) and measuring them consistently from the locations that matter (cloud regions, branches, VPCs). Then set SLO targets (for example, “p95 latency under X ms” or “packet loss below Y%”) and track performance against those targets over time to understand when the network is consuming your error budget. Kentik supports this by combining synthetic testing from global and private agents with per-metric health thresholds and alerting, and by providing APIs to export test results if you want to compute compliance and error budgets in an external SLO tool.

Take the Next Step with Kentik

Kentik is the network intelligence platform built for cloud and hybrid network teams who need to know not just what’s happening on the network, but where, why, and what to do about it.

Request a personalized demo to see Kentik’s cloud network monitoring in action
Start a free trial and connect your own AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI environment
Explore Kentik for multi-cloud observability
Learn how Kentik AI accelerates network investigation with natural-language queries
Compare options in the Best Network Monitoring Tools for 2026 roundup

Updated: May 21, 2026