how to view my network

[argnetworking]

Hello everyone. I have a question regarding monitoring, I´m looking for an appliance/software to be able to know what is going on with my network. I want to see statistics and graphics and be able to predict problems and analize a specific problem when someone reports a "slow" network.

I have been reading and netflow seem to be the answear, any suggestion? I will have a pair of 6500 and I know you can get a card for that, but the question is if it is the right choice.

Please, any suggestion would be appreciated, any hardware or software.

Thanks a lot

[ALIAOF_]

If you have a tight budget check out Nagios (its open source and free I love it), if you have lot of money Solarwinds.

[garapoglou]

Hi,

Nagios is a great program to monitor the status of network interfaces or systems, but its main job is not collecting netflow data. Maybe there are plug-ins which do the trick on Nagios, but I'm not sure whether it's an easy task configuring them or if the result is the needed one.

Netflow is definitely the answer and it has to be enabled on each interface that needs to be monitored. To get the data and create diagrams and reports, a netflow collector utility has to be installed and configured somewhere on the network. A virtual server or a common PC would be just fine.

Although most of the netflow collector utilities are commercial, there are freeware ones out there too.

After a quick google search, I found the following resource:

http://www.networkuptime.com/tools/netflow

In our company I've configured ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer, which is not freeware. It works like a charm though.

Best regards,

Giorgos

[ALIAOF_]

Nagios has a netflow plugin

http://www.plixer.com/blog/netflow/nagios-netflow-plugin/

[argnetworking]

I use nagios and cactis for a lot of things but I dind't know it has a netflow plugin. I will check the plugin.

Regarding the NAM card for the 6500, anyone knows if I can activate netflow on all my ports at the same time (I have 2 48spf cards and one card with 4 10G ports) or I have a limitation of ports that I can monitor.

I have a hard time finding specifications regarding netflow and in general how to monitor a lan network, any link pointing me to the right direction?. I want to be able to see what is going through my network.

Thanks a lot.