What is a key advantage of having a network monitoring tool?

Network monitoring tools play a crucial role in maintaining the health and efficiency of a network. One of the key advantages of such tools is their ability to identify bottlenecks and outages. This means they can continuously analyze network traffic, performance metrics, and system logs to detect areas where performance may be degraded or where connectivity may be lost altogether.

By providing real-time insights into the network's performance, these tools allow network administrators to quickly pinpoint and address issues before they escalate into more significant problems. This proactive approach is critical for minimizing downtime, optimizing resource use, and ensuring that users remain satisfied with the network's performance.

While other options may represent important aspects of network management, they do not encapsulate the primary advantage of monitoring tools as effectively. For instance, while simplifying user access is important for usability, it’s not the core function of monitoring tools. Similarly, preventing unauthorized access is a security measure mainly associated with firewalls and access control systems, not network monitoring. Lastly, designing network infrastructure is a task more aligned with network architecture rather than ongoing monitoring. Thus, the identification of bottlenecks and outages stands out as the most pertinent advantage of employing a network monitoring tool.