Why is network traffic monitoring important?
Network traffic monitoring helps organizations track and analyze the volume of data that flows through a network. Network admins can effortlessly identify potential bottlenecks and outages with real-time information about bandwidth metrics in a network.
Site24x7 offers complete visibility into your network with stats on peak traffic, surges in traffic volumes, application and interface traffic, and bandwidth-hogging conversations. Also, our network traffic tool can help you analyze flows based on various technologies like NetFlow, sFlow, and J-Flow.
Benefits of network traffic monitoring
As a network administrator, you need a network monitoring tool to keep an eye on device-to-device traffic within your network and to flag any bandwidth hog, intrusion, slowness, or unauthorized access. Here's where our network traffic monitoring tool comes in handy.
By using a network traffic monitoring tool, you can:
Spot traffic peaks or clogs
Identify surges in traffic volumes and bandwidth hogging conversations.
Obtain detailed reports
View in-depth reports on application and interface traffic.
Identify traffic sources
Monitor the traffic hotspots in your network.
Track traffic between nodes
Monitor traffic moving between the main office and branch offices.
Detect anomalies
Perform custom pings and synthetic tests using the Site24x7 On-Premise Poller.
Monitor network quality
Test the quality of network bandwidth and ensure appropriate allocation.
How to monitor network traffic
Adverse network performance can result in losses in terms of costs or resources. To prevent this, you need to monitor network traffic. With network traffic monitoring, you can easily track any suspicious activity and optimize your network traffic.
Here are the steps you need to follow while monitoring network traffic:
Identify the nodes where you would like to monitor the traffic
Select the devices or nodes which may require monitoring. For instance, if you select a router and a switch, you can monitor the traffic for all the devices connected to those through interface traffic data.
Discover devices in your network
Site24x7 automatically discovers devices in your network and also adds new devices when they are detected. These devices also reflect in topology maps with the help of our network mapping tool.
Use Site24x7's Network Traffic Analyzer
Use Site24x7's network traffic monitoring tool, which monitors your source and destination devices, their interfaces, and the traffic flowing through them. With interface-level details along with insights based on the IP address, application, and protocol, you can view your monitoring data from dashboards and consolidated reports.
Supported flow technologies to monitor network traffic
Site24x7 supports all leading flow technologies available in the market.
A network traffic monitoring tool for all your needs
Optimize data use across your network
Identify bandwidth hogs and block or restrict them in your environment to optimize data usage across the network.
Improve network security by tracking anomalies
Detect traffic anomalies and drill down to the IP address that caused the spike in a conversation.
Leverage dashboards to identify top users
View exclusive dashboards for top devices or interfaces organized by traffic, volume, and bandwidth utilization to identify high network bandwidth users.
Classify and manage traffic using templates
Use application and differentiated services code point (DSCP) templates to classify and manage network traffic to obtain the relevant stats.
Receive alerts about busy interfaces
Configure threshold limits at the device or interface level for all key metrics and receive alerts on breaches so that you can execute corrective measures on time.
Leverage support for devices from multiple vendors
Collect and analyze flows from multiple vendors, like Cisco, HP, Juniper, Fortinet, SonicWall, Dell, Palo Alto, 3Com, and Foundry Networks.
Know the top N traffic generators
View the applications, protocols, and conversations with the highest interface-level traffic flows.
Organize your traffic analysis using reports
Extract tabular data or easy-to-interpret graphs as reports, which you can generate periodically, and export in different formats.
Why Site24x7 is the best network traffic monitoring tool
Full-stack Monitoring
Site24x7 offers full-fledged all-in-one monitoring for websites, servers, applications, logs, cloud, and virtualization, with out-of-the-box reporting and dashboard capabilities.
Network Monitoring
Site24x7's comprehensive network monitoring portfolio comprises features such as SNMP trap processing, mapping, and custom SNMP monitoring.
Mobile App
Monitor your network resources on the move with our Android and iOS apps.
Versatile Alerting
Get SMS messages, emails, voice calls, or push notifications through the Android and iOS apps and RSS feeds.
Third-party Integrations
Integrate with software like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Jira through which you can route your alert notifications.
One solution for all your network management needs
Site24x7 offers network monitoring for device and interface monitoring; network traffic monitoring to analyze flows based on different technologies like NetFlow, J-Flow, and sFlow; and network configuration management to manage network configuration backups—all from a single, SaaS-based monitoring console. Accomplish hassle-free control over your network from a single console without switching between software packages.
Overview of network traffic monitoring
What is network traffic?
Network traffic is the total data moving through a network from a source to a destination at a given point in time. The data transferred is comprised of packets, which are the fundamental units of network data transfers. During data transmission, traffic data from the source gets divided into individual packets and is reassembled at the destination later.
Types of traffic:
- Real-time traffic: Traffic that is time-sensitive and requires high-quality data transmission
- Non-real-time traffic: Traffic consumed by an application for day-to-day activities
- Busy/heavy traffic: Traffic that consumes a high amount of bandwidth
What is network traffic monitoring?
Network traffic monitoring is the process of analyzing the traffic that flows across a network by keeping track of its source; its destination; and the applications, ports, and protocols involved in the conversation. Monitoring network traffic provides improved visibility and invaluable insights that are highly beneficial to understanding your network's behavior. It also helps you weed out performance and security issues within the network by analyzing network device traffic (i.e., traffic through routers, switches, firewalls, and servers).
Benefits of using network traffic monitoring:
- Helps analyze bandwidth issues
- Identifies the top talkers
- Improves the user experience
What is NetFlow?
NetFlow was created by Cisco and is the most commonly used flow technology. It tracks and records all traffic as it enters and exits an interface. NetFlow is often used for flow data analytics. NetFlow datagrams carry information like the source address, destination address, source port, destination port, and protocol values in the flow record. NetFlow versions 5 and 9 are most commonly used.
With NetFlow traffic analysis, you can:
- Identify bottlenecks in the network.
- Analyze instances of poor network performance.
What is J-Flow?
Juniper Networks developed the data flow sampling technique known as J-Flow, which the SRX Series devices support. The data includes all network activities, such as conversations inside enabled ports, and also identifies top talkers. J-Flow works by monitoring each packet that flows inside a network. It allows packets in the input stream to be sampled when enabled on an interface.
With J-Flow traffic analysis, you can:
- Analyze and classify real-time network traffic.
- Assess network usage parameters.
What is sFlow?
Sampled flow, commonly known as sFlow, is the standard technology for packet export in Layer 2 of the Open Systems Interconnection model. As a packet sampling technology, sFlow samples IP packets moving from a source to a destination through a particular port. It provides the means of exporting truncated packets together with the interface counters. sFlow uses sampling to achieve scalability and is used for high-speed networks.
sFlow has two types of sampling:
- A random sampling of packets or application layer operations
- A time-based sampling of counters
How does the Site24x7 network traffic monitor work?
Site24x7 uses the On-Premise Poller to monitor network traffic. Once you install the On-Premise Poller (the NetFlow collector) and configure your devices to export flows to it, the On-Premise Poller starts receiving the flows. Then, it processes raw data and presents it in intuitive formats for detailed interpretation and understanding. You can view the data on a custom dashboard or obtain reports that present the data in a graphical format.
Can I see what others are doing on my network?
Yes. Using NetFlow monitoring, you can view your network's IP and application traffic stats, which help you know which particular IP and application have generated or consumed the most traffic.
How do I control network traffic?
You can control network traffic by configuring threshold limits for all the critical metrics, like in and out traffic and bandwidth utilization. With these thresholds in place, you will receive alerts whenever the traffic or bandwidth breaches your configured values. Based on these alerts, you can identify the particular applications or ports that are responsible and block them.