Network Traffic Monitor

Enterprises rely highly on streamlined application delivery, but as network size grows, maintaining the optimal operational level can get difficult. Therefore, many organizations can face trouble differentiating the traffic that goes in and out, leaving unnecessary traffic exploit the existing bandwidth. Monitoring traffic of your devices and interfaces, in such cases, is important for analyzing the availability, usage of network bandwidth and identifying network anomalies.

You need to measure the traffic entering your network, analyze if it is secure for your environment, and how you can optimize the efficiency so that there's no room for congestion issues. Effectively monitoring your network traffic can be broken down into five steps:

1. Finding the best data source for your network

Data sources can predominantly be classified into flow data, sourced data from layer-3 devices, and packet data.

2. Monitoring devices and apps in your network

For efficient network monitoring, it is essential to monitor every single device or network element in your network to ensure optimum performance and security. This includes real-time network traffic monitoring and passive monitoring with historical data.

3. Pick the right tool

Using the right tool to monitor network traffic is the most crucial step in enterprise network traffic monitoring. A powerful tool not only monitors bandwidth usage, but keeps track of every activity in your network and helps identify who is using your network, how much, when, and why.

Traditional and free network traffic monitor tools for Windows analyze the network using hardware probes or packet analyzers to offer granular and detailed information on network traffic. However, hardware probes require complex deployment procedures and typically do not account for IP security traffic.

On top of this, packet analyzers flood you with results that do not offer direct insight into application-specific traffic in the network. As a result, the IT department faces a longer troubleshooting cycle and takes a lot of time to make critical decisions affecting the network.

4. Check for suspicious activity

While firewalls and intrusion detection systems are important for network security, a network traffic monitoring system that monitors your network closely at all times and identifies anomalies in network traffic patterns is what helps completely secure your network.

5. Optimize network traffic

Optimizing your network involves:

• Overall performance optimization to prevent bandwidth hogs.
• Using network forensics to identify and drill down to the root cause of specific issues in your network that cause latency and jitter resulting in poor voice and video communication.
• And using quality of service (QoS) to ensure mission-critical apps are prioritized.

Challenges in choosing a network traffic monitoring tool

Today with Cisco’s NetFlow innovation (and other flows from other vendors), ManageEngine's real-time network traffic monitoring tool takes far less time and effort, and yields better results. NetFlow Analyzer continuously collects granular details on IP traffic without affecting device performance or increasing costs.

Using this exported NetFlow data, ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer gives network administrators and managers the visibility they need to understand the wide area network (WAN). Armed with powerful instant reports on top talkers, conversations, and more, this network traffic monitor tells IT teams exactly what they need to know in order to troubleshoot or make informed capacity planning decisions.

Monitor network traffic with NetFlow Analyzer

NetFlow Analyzer is a web-based network traffic monitor tool that analyzes NetFlow exports from Cisco routers to monitor network traffic metrics including traffic volume, traffic speed, packets, top talkers, bandwidth utilization, and high usage times.

There are various reports that can be obtained from NetFlow Analyzer. This network traffic monitoring software is easy to deploy and work with. You can install NetFlow Analyzer on a Windows or Linux machine and use a web browser to access the client interface. After installation, set up your Cisco routers and switches to export NetFlow data to NetFlow Analyzer. Within minutes, traffic graphs are plotted and reports are automatically generated, and you're all set to monitor traffic in your network.

Exporting flows in NetFlow Analyzer is an effortless process and can be done in a single click. NetFlow Analyzer is an advanced network usage monitor, giving you an overview of your network's bandwidth usage statistics and inventory at a glance via it's customizable dashboard as soon as the devices are discovered. Users can then drill down into the interfaces to view network traffic and information on the traffic, application, source, destination, conversation, differentiated services code point (DSCP), and QoS of the traffic. Detailed reports with one-minute granularity can be generated based on these critical data parameters.

Key features of network traffic monitor

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a web-based real-time network traffic monitoring solution used by more than 4,000 enterprises. It analyzes NetFlow exports from Cisco routers to gain in-depth information about network traffic, including traffic volume, top talkers, bandwidth consumption, and high usage times.

The information provided by NetFlow Analyzer helps IT teams with:

• Identifying top talkers and conversations in the network: Determine which users and what applications are using maximum bandwidth, and drill down for conversational details. Read more about bandwidth monitoring.
• Network traffic monitoring and projecting traffic trends and usage patterns: View trends in network traffic, and determine top applications and peak usage times. Read more about network traffic analysis.
• Defining applications to monitor network traffic: Use a combination of ports and protocols to define unlimited applications, and recognize this traffic exclusively in traffic reports. You can also map applications to IP addresses.
• Monitoring bandwidth based on department: Define departments based on IP addresses, and identify bandwidth use and application use for each department.
• Managing devices exclusively: Categorize devices, organize them into logical groups, and monitor traffic reports exclusively for groups.
• Accounting: Improve resource utilization accounting with real-time bandwidth and network usage statistics. Read more on billing and accounting.
• Monitoring site-to-site traffic: Monitor network traffic between two specific sites, which are created based on the IP address or IP network. This feature helps you understand the network traffic behavior between any two user-defined sites.

Check out all of Netflow Analyzer's features. With ManageEngine's Windows and Linux network traffic monitoring software you can manage network traffic, and do much more!

Download | Interactive Demo

NetFlow Analyzer is a network traffic monitor software for Windows and Linux and collects and analyzes NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow, and more. As real-time network traffic monitoring software, it helps you monitor bandwidth utilization and makes network traffic management easier and more efficient. This traffic monitoring tool does not require any hardware probes and can be downloaded, used in your network environment, and evaluated free for 30 days.

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