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1304
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Netflow products you are using?

bnidacoc
Level 1
Level 1

I am looking employ the netflow capabilities we have on our 6500, 4500(NFFC), and 7500 devices.

I was wondering if some users could comment on their experiences (positives and negatives) about the products you have used. Reliablility, limitations, and vapor-ware features would be good items to address.

Thanks.

12 Replies 12

pradeepde
Level 5
Level 5

Cisco CNS NetFlow Collection Engine (NFC) technology efficiently provides the metering base for a key set of applications including network traffic accounting, usage-based network billing, network planning, network monitoring, outbound marketing, and data mining capabilities for both service provider and enterprise customers.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps1964/

I use Netflow tracker

http://www.crannog-software.com/index.php?go=Product.ShowDetail&ProductID=1

It installs in about 4 clicks of a mouse.

Once you configure the router to export the flow the sofware creates it. If you give it the snmp details it will pull all the interface names in too.

The software is web based and very easy to use

felixj.alvarez
Level 1
Level 1

If you need to installs the product in about 4 clicks of a mouse, ok, you can use Netflow tracker http://www.crannog-software.com/

But if really you have to exploit all the strength of netflow utilize FlowScan (http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/FlowScan/ ) with cflowd or flowtools and the JKFlow report module, it is not easy to install and configure, and you need to use a Linux computer, but is possible to do all you probably need.

I have been playing around with AdventNet ManageEngine NetFlow Analyser and its excellent. It needs perl and a chunk of memory - I have been running it on Windows Server 2003 without any problems (except that I need some more memory in the PC...).

http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/netflow/index.html

It is a free download and runs unrestricted for 30-days, after that you it continues to run but will only manage 2 interfaces. If you don't want to install it then the online demo shows you pretty much what you can do.

HTH

Andy

Thanks Andrew,

That is actually what I did purchase after I started this thread. Some of the other commercial products didn't offer graphical drill down, but only offered great reporting. NFA4 (now NFA5) was a great compromise between the two.

It's interesting to note that Cisco IT uses a couple of third-party NetFlow reporting tools, rather than the CNS NFC.

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps6601/c1042/cdccont_0900aecd80311fc2.pdf

Hello.

Most of the 3rd parties using graphical drill down,

see: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/Tech/nmp/netflow/partners/commercial/ It is list of commercial Cisco partners. I know 5 companies that support GUI, eg. Crannog, AdventNet, Caligare, Arbor, etc...

Differences are in the reporting capabilities. I'm from Caligare company so I can tell you what is implemented in our product, for others contact their sales or technical staff.

Jan

Caligare Co.

http://www.caligare.com

mmletzko
Level 1
Level 1

NetQoSs Reporter Analyzer is the Cadillac of Netflow products. It's more expensive than the others (we've demo'd all of them) but it's a true Enterprise-wide solution. They also offer Application monitoring with their SuperAgent.

Jan Nejman
Level 3
Level 3

Hello,

you can also use Caligare Flow Inspector. This tool is designed for mangaing huge traffic. You can

filter traffic on the user specified conditions, e.g

IP addresses, networks, interfaces, ports, protocols, application, time and byte/packet volume.

Many statistics is available. It is easy solution to detect worm infected stations in your network. click on the http://www.caligare.com to view more details.

Jan

Ps.: If you are interest in implementing some new features or custumizations, don't hesite to contact me.

pete.keeffe
Level 1
Level 1

Another nice and simple one to use is Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyser. Compared to most comercial units, it's relativley cheap and the developers are keen on implimenting any suggested improvements.

Thanks everyone. Well, a long time ago and a month or two after my original post, we went with ManageEngine's Netflow Analyzer. It has been very usefully to identify traffic/usage patterns and identify who is consuming all of the bandwidth in limited bandwidth sites/circuits when they are saturated.

Agree with the Netflow Analyzer ManageEngine from Adventnet. The ease of use and features you get for the price is very good. It has rapidly become the first thing to check on when the age old complaint of "the network's slow" arrives.

It has also assisted in pro-actively picking up misconfigured applications because of it's ease of navigation in getting your traffic questions answered quickly.

The product support has been very good so far... questions answered very quick.

Like all databases with free-form queries, don't try and skimp on hardware grunt as your data collection grows.

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