Until 2012, NetFlow Analyzer’s Enterprise edition benefited ISPs, MSPs and large organizations that had distributed network architecture, in monitoring their bandwidth.
Any organization with less than 600 interfaces and want to monitor all of them by installing product on Head Quarters data center can go with Professional and Professional Plus Edition which has integrated collectors and reporting engine which collects the data and generate reports.
The Enterprise edition was majorly used by organizations that had a distributed architecture and monitoring was done by means of Central server and multiple collectors across different sites in the same network.
Limitation of Enterprise Edition:…
Cisco Performance Monitoring using NetFlow Analyzer.
Cisco Performance Monitor helps you to identify performance issues on the network, Now a days Video is every where and when it comes to corporate network, it has to be treated in such a way that it is with high quality as expected.
An organization considering implementation of Video conferencing or any video streaming should also consider that this will increase significant load on the network. The network should be capable enough to handle this additional load along with existing load.
NetFlow Analyzer with its value added features like Cisco IP SLA VO and Cisco Medianet and Mediatrace helps to implement video traffic on the network effectively.
Network Load Testing using Cisco IP SLA VO :-
Video packets (RT…
Configuring HighPerf Reporting Engine Part-1
In continuation to our introduction blog on HighPerf reporting engine, this one discuss about how to install the HighPerf reporting engine and integrate it with NetFlow Analyzer.
This HighPerf reporting engine comes as a add-on package to NetFlow Analyzer. It can be installed on the same machine where NetFlow Analyzer is installed or on a remote server.
HighPerf Reporting Engine and NetFlow Anlayzer on the same server:
If you prefer to install the HighPerf Add On on the same server where you are going deploy NetFlow Analyzer, You can download the installable for Windows which has HighPerf add-on from here and Linux from here.
The installation guide for Windows can be downloaded from here and Linux from here.…
Cisco ASA 8.4(5) and above NetFlow updates
Cisco is always known for rapidly rolling out enhancements to their product portfolio, Cisco ASA 8.4(5) was recently released with a lot of features and security enhancements.
NetFlow Secure Event Logging (NSEL) is now enhanced and with the new Cisco 8.4(5) NSEL export, it is possible to visualize accurate IN and OUT traffic with ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer.
Older IOS Version NSEL Limitation:
Cisco ASA monitoring through NSEL in its older version, had the following limitations:
1. The concept of ‘active time out’ and ‘inactive timeout’, which allows flow data export in a timely manner from IOS devices, was non-existent for NetFlow packets exported from the Cisco ASA. This r…
Configuring sFlow export from ZTE and Edge-Core switches.
This blog is to enlighten you about configuration to export sFlow from ZTE and Edge-core switches.
ZTE switches:
The sFlow commands for these switches are as follows:
sFlow commands:
sflow enable
sflow agent-config ipv4-address <Source IP Address>
sflow collector-config ipv4-address <Destination IP Address> <UDP Port>
For each interface:
interface <interface name>
sflow-sample-rate ingress <sample rate>
sflow-sample-rate egress <sample rate>
exit
Sample configuration
sflow enable
sflow agent-config ipv4-address 192.168.2.100
sflow collector-config ipv4-address 192.168.2.210 9996
interface gei_0/1
sflow-sample-rate ingress 102…
Enabling sFlow on Cisco Nexus 3000
Different from that of other Cisco IOS devices,Cisco Nexus 3000 Series supports sFlow. NX-OS 5.0(3)U4(1) release includes sFlow support. Hence I thought this blog will be helpful for our customers to know how to configure sFlow on their Nexus 3000.
The configuration is as follow:
switchNexus3000# configure terminal //switching to configuration mode
switchNexus3000(config)# feature sflow // enabling sFlow configuration
switchNexus3000(config)# sflow sampling-rate 4096 // this enables sampling
switchNexus3000(config)# sflow max-sampled-size 200 // we mentioned the size of the sampled packet
switchNexus3000(config)# sflow collector-port 9996 // to which port the packets to be sent
switch…
Application Traffic Growth Analysis using NetFlow Analyzer
Those who are using ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer for bandwidth monitoring may wonder what this capacity planning report really helps to achieve. The following things are benefits of using capacity planning report.
- High Granular Traffic Report.
- In depth visibility on traffic pattern
- Traffic trending over a time period.
- Analyze Traffic Growth.
- Determine if it is really the business critical applications that were in the top 10 of your bandwidth.
- Decide if the existing bandwidth is sufficient or not
Here is the simple use case scenario explains the need of capacity planning report when it comes to bandwidth analysis.
Scenario :-
Slowness in accessing business critical application hosted in remote site …
Future Ready Network Bandwidth Monitoring Tool
Earlier in my blogs,we have explored different technologies and features that are offered by NetFlow Analyzer related to bandwidth monitoring. This blog post is about a futuristic reporting feature.
The future is going to be IPV6(yes! it is officially launched) networks ranging from small to large are slowly migrating to IPV6 and for sure the IPV4 will be faced off soon.
Here few advantages of IPV6:
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Simplified Addressing
-
Auto Configuration
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Mobility
-
Secure communication
NetFlow Analyzer as a bandwidth monitoring tool quickly adopted this migration and brought a preliminary support to IPV6, that is we can see IPV6 related information in the raw data reports.
For detail study on data storage pattern in Net…
Policing Live video traffic and monitoring using NetFlow Analyzer
I hope everyone who had attended our joint webinar with Cisco about QoS Design and validation, would have got a better idea on how to design a network with effective QoS policing. For those who missed the Webinar, you can find the video presentation here.
In continuation to our Webinar, this blogs helps you in setting up QoS policies for Live Video Traffic and monitor them using NetFlow Analyzer.
On a network the Video traffic spread in three format:
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Video Conferencing
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Video On Demand
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Video Broadcast
Video traffic has very high and extremely variable packets rate with a much higher average maximum transmission unit (MTU) when comparing to Voice.
QoS Treatment:-
For classifying the Video traffic to appropriat…
Understanding IP Precedence, TOS & DSCP
People using NetFlow Analyzer wonder, what these reports DSCP, TOS actually means ? Here is the blog which explain more detail about these fields.
The NetFlow packets exported from the device originally contains ToS value on each flow. From the ToS value, the analyzing software derives the DSCP.
Type of Service (TOS):-
The Type of Service field is present in IP Header and it was originally defined in RFC 791.
The Type of Service octet consists of three fields. The last 3 bits ( 7,6,5) are for the first field, labeled “Precedence” , intended to denote the importance or priority of the datagram. The second field, labeled “TOS” , denotes how the network should make tradeoffs between thro…
- IN and OUT reports with NetFlow Analyzer
- NBAR Report via Flexible NetFlow – Configuration and Reporting
- Voice Traffic Analysis using NetFlow Analyzer
- Problem: Traffic double counts with IPSec tunnels? Use the ESP Filter in NetFlow Analyzer !
- Enhanced Cisco ASA NSEL Reporting in NetFlow Analyzer
- Connect to NetFlow Analyzer GUI in your iPhone.