SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer – FREE TRIAL We will be highlighting some of these below in more detail. The top NetFlow Analyzers & CollectorsĪs we mentioned earlier in this article, there are Flow Collectors that receive flow records from exporters and analyze these records to produce sensible information. NetFlow version 5, 7 and 9 are the commonly used versions. Note: There are several versions of NetFlow (from version 1 to 9), some of which have become obsolete. Moreover, there is also an IETF protocol for transmitting IP flow information across a network – IP Flow Information Export ( IPFIX) – which is based on Cisco’s NetFlow version 9. At the same time, other vendors also have their own versions of NetFlow including J-Flow for Juniper and NetStream for Huawei. It is important to point out at this point that even though NetFlow was developed by Cisco, it is supported by other vendors. Instead, the Flow Collector just receives the flow records and another application does this analysis. Note: In some instances, the Flow Collector does not do the actual analysis of the flow records. On the other hand, the Flow Collector receives flow records from the exporter, processes them and can analyze this information to be presented to users in sensible form. This exporter is usually configured on a device such as a router or a switch and in some cases, there may be multiple exporters for different flows. The Flow Exporter captures flow information to be sent to a collector. When NetFlow is implemented on a network, there are usually two major components: Flow Exporter and Flow Collector.
#Ntopng free windows#
nProbe runs on Linux and Windows and ntopng is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, RaspbianOS, and FreeBSD. nProbe and ntopng A traffic analysis combination with a browser-based interface.Installs as a virtual machine or can be taken as a cloud service. Plixer Scrutinizer A traffic analyzer that can be used for security investigations.Noction Flow Analyzer This monitoring tool uses NetFlow and other traffic statistics gathering protocols to generate an information pool about network activity and bandwidth usage in a multi-vendor site.PRTG Network Monitor – FREE TRIAL A bundle of infrastructure monitoring tool that includes traffic monitoring.Site24x7 Network Traffic Monitoring – FREE TRIAL A network monitoring service that is part of a wider system monitoring service that is delivered from the cloud.ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer – FREE TRIAL Tracks traffic volumes live and includes capacity planning tools.SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer – FREE TRIAL A bandwidth monitoring and management package that also covers virtual switches.Here is our list of the top NetFlow Analyzers & Collectors: The type of information collected from IP traffic by NetFlow to determine a flow include:īy collecting this information and analyzing it, a lot of insight can be gained about the network and used for several purposes including bandwidth monitoring, network performance troubleshooting and anomaly detection. NetFlow is a protocol developed by Cisco used to collect information about traffic flowing through devices on a network.