Enhanced Reports in NetFlow Analyzer -Part 2

Hope you have seen the last blog regarding the reporting enhancements we made in NetFlow Analyzer Version 8 . In continuation of the last blog, some of the other reporting enhancements.

1. New averages for Traffic Report (5 and 15 Minute)

2. Global Search Function

3. Enhanced CBQoS Reporting.

Traffic Reports:

In earlier versions of the product, traffic reports generated for less than 24 hour period were shown in 1 minute granularity. As the time period increased, the granularity also increased. But we had demands for other granular reporting like 5 minutes which would enable users to compare their NetFlow statistics with SNMP statistics because the difference between 1 minute average and 5 minute average was much higher than required and also called for the user to do a manual comparison.

We have now introduced new reporting granularity to the traffic reports where data can be shown in 1 minute, 5 minute or 15 minute averages. Users can now get a better picture for capacity planning based on different averages and can also compare the NetFlow statistics with SNMP based statistics avoiding manual calculation. Users can also also generate conversation reports for all these averages helping users find the cause for change in traffic pattern visibility reports.

Global Search Report :

Users looking for an IP Address, port, protocol or for that matter, any information, had to select an interface and then use a troubleshoot report to search for their requirement. A global search option was one of the most requested feature form customers and evaluators alike. Just as most of our features are defined by users, we introduced the ”Global Search’ function in Version 8.

This report helps users to generate reports for IP address, Port, network, nodes, Application, DSCP…, etc by entering their criteria in the ‘Global Search’ box available in the top right corner of the UI from every page. When you enter a criteria here and search, the results are generated for the specific value after searching all the interfaces being monitored with NetFlow Analyzer .

Enahanced CBQoS Reporting:

Quality of Service refers to the ability to provide better treatment for some applications over other services in the network. The primary goal of implementing QoS in business critical networks includes priority routing for critical applications through dedicated bandwidth, controlling jitter and latency. Configuring QoS can also limit the bandwidth used by non critical network traffic and so makes network performance more predictable and bandwidth utilization much more effective.

We have discussed a lot about deploying CBQoS policies for improved network performance. You can find CBQoS blog series in this link. Until last version, CBQoS reorts will show only the parent policies with its pre and post policy and drop metrics . From Version 8, we list all the child policies created under the parent policy along with the pre and post policy, drop metrics for each child policy and even match statement based statistics. All the reports for CBQoS can also be exported to PDF and scheduled from this version which takes bandwidth management to a more easier level.