Network Synthetic Monitoring Explained: How It Works + Best Tools

Most monitoring tells you whether a service is up. Network synthetic monitoring tells you what the experience looks like from where your users actually are — and where on the network path a problem lives.

This video explains what network synthetic monitoring is, how it works, and the synthetic test types network teams rely on: ping, traceroute, DNS, HTTP and API, page load, transaction, and BGP monitoring tests. It covers how it differs from web and application synthetic monitoring — the Selenium and Playwright model built around browser checks and Core Web Vitals — why it pairs with network path analysis, and how correlating synthetic results with real flow data and BGP routing turns "a test failed" into an evidence-backed root cause.

It also breaks down the best network synthetic monitoring tools by category — network intelligence and internet performance monitoring (Kentik, Cisco ThousandEyes, Catchpoint), cloud-native options (Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics), full-stack observability suites (Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic), and web and open-source tools (Pingdom, Checkly, Grafana k6, Playwright) — plus the five things to look for when you evaluate one.

─── WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ───

• What network synthetic monitoring is, and how it differs from ordinary uptime monitoring that only tells you whether a service is up
• The four moving parts of synthetic monitoring — agents (public and private), scheduling and scripting, data collection, and alerting
• The full range of synthetic test types network teams use, and which layer of the stack each one isolates
• How network synthetic monitoring differs from web and application synthetic monitoring (the Selenium and Playwright model built around browser checks and Core Web Vitals)
• Why network path analysis and AS-path visibility are what make a failed test actionable
• How correlating synthetic results with real flow data and BGP routing reveals whether real users are affected, how many, and why
• The best network synthetic monitoring tools by category — network intelligence and IPM, cloud-native, full-stack observability, and web and open-source — and which type fits which job
• The five things to look for when you evaluate a network synthetic monitoring tool

─── CHAPTERS ───

0:00 What is network synthetic monitoring?

0:53 How does network synthetic monitoring work?

1:36 What synthetic test types do network teams use?

2:22 How is it different from web synthetic monitoring?

3:07 How does network path analysis fit in?

3:45 How do you correlate synthetic tests with real traffic and routing?

4:27 What are the best network synthetic monitoring tools?

6:09 What should you look for in a network synthetic monitoring tool?

─── RELATED RESOURCES FROM KENTIK ───

📘 Network Synthetic Monitoring: What It Is, How It Works, and the Best Tools (full guide)
https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/network-synthetic-monitoring/

📖 What Is Synthetic Monitoring? Types and Use Cases
https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/what-is-synthetic-monitoring/

🔁 Synthetic Monitoring vs. Real User Monitoring (RUM)
https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/synthetic-monitoring-vs-real-user-monitoring/

🛰️ Network Path Analysis: Route, Hops, and AS-Level Transitions
https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/network-path-analysis/

📊 What Is Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)?
https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/what-is-digital-experience-monitoring/

🧪 Kentik Synthetics (ping, traceroute, HTTP, DNS, transaction, and BGP tests)
https://www.kentik.com/product/synthetic-monitoring/

📺 Best Network Monitoring Tools: https://youtu.be/2g4c2s6x95E

• ️ See Kentik in action — get a demo
• https://www.kentik.com/get-demo/

─── ABOUT KENTIK ───

Kentik is the network intelligence platform for modern infrastructure teams. We unify network telemetry — flow, metrics, cloud, routing, internet paths, and synthetic tests — and layer AI on top, so NetOps teams can move faster from alert to explanation. For synthetic monitoring specifically, Kentik runs ping, traceroute, HTTP, DNS, page load, and transaction tests plus BGP monitor tests from 300+ global agents and private agents in your own infrastructure — then correlates the results with real flow telemetry and BGP routing on a single timeline. Kentik AI Advisor investigates degradations across synthetic, flow, BGP, and device data in natural language, and autonomous, flow-based tests automatically generate coverage for the destinations your real traffic is actually reaching, so testing follows your users instead of a static list.

🌐 Learn more about Kentik: https://www.kentik.com
🆓 Start a free 30-day Kentik trial: https://www.kentik.com/product/plans-pricing/
🔔 Subscribe to KentikHQ for more network intelligence content: https://www.youtube.com/@KentikHQ

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