NetFlow-Lite (NFlite) Exports Using the nProbe and a NetFlow Collector
This month’s Cisco Live show in London allowed for some great opportunities. We mentioned that we met up with Luca Deri, developer of the nProbe. Our friends at Plixer International also attended the show where Cisco demonstrated the abilities of their new Catalyst 4948E NetFlow-Lite (NFlite) exports using Plixer’s Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer with the nProbe. NFlite is a sampling technology using NetFlow v9.
Plixer’s Product Manager, Michael Patterson, recently blogged about its features, explaining how the NFlite samples are sent to the nProbe, sending one sample per NetFlow datagram. He also included a screen capture of their Scrutinizer NetFlow collector demonstrating the integrated view of NetFlow data from N7k and NetFlow-lite from the 4948E.
Latency Service Levels from the Cloud
Are you getting geared up to leverage the cloud from a service provider? I’m sure you have thought about reliability and backup plans. How about performance?
Will you know how well the outsourced application is performing? Will you be able to report on who in the organization is suffering from poor connection times, and are the issues consistent? Is the issue specific to a subnet or department? Is slowness a problem across all applications or only with specific cloud service?
Here is a suggestion: use NetFlow or IPFIX reporting to monitor the latency of the host to host connections for each application on your network. Yes, it can all be done with NetFlow or IPFIX. Several vendors are now exporting latency within NetFlow or IPFIX Datagrams. Cisco, Sonicwall, and the nBox are all vendor examples. Read more
Cisco Live- London with nProbe Developer Luca Deri
I went to Cisco Live Europe 2011 recently and met up with Luca Deri, the developer of the nProbe (a.k.a. NetFlow Probe). It was great to finally meet this industry icon for NetFlow and IPFIX. I just had to have my picture taken with him. Luca is on the right in the photo below:
NetFlow Domain Reporting: Part 2
In the prior NetFlow Domain Reporting blog, I outlined how to view URLs using a NetFlow Probe called nProbe. In this post I’ll explain why 174.123.133.232 doesn’t show up for theplanet.com.
Answer
The server that hosts theplanet.com is not hosted on 174.123.133.232, but 70.87.6.117, as we can see in the above command window below.
NetFlow Domain Reporting: Part 1
I decided to do some IPFIX reporting on our NetFlow Probe (i.e. nProbe) that is hanging off of a spanned/mirrored port on our Enterasys switch. The new nProbe is kind of neat because it exports latency and URL information via IPFIX. I wanted to see if it caught all the URLs I was looking at so, I filtered on my IP address and ran a Top Domains report as shown below. Click to expand the image.
I didn’t remember browsing to some of the domains listed, so I clicked on View Raw Flows to look at the URLs I had hit in a 3 minute period. One of the URLs started with ‘trashminer.com’ and I was surprised, because I didn’t see this host in the top domains report above.
Monitor your Network with nProbe and nBox
It seems that today’s Network Managers are continually putting out fires while conquering challenges of modern technology. Networks have become more complex than ever before, requiring Network Managers to become even more proactive and efficient. 
Effectively monitoring and maintaining a network has become a requirement, and NetFlow allows that to happen successfully.
Luca Deri founded ntop in 1998 because he wanted to solve his employer’s network monitoring problems but had no tool to provide simple and efficient answers. Through ntop, he offers nProbe and nBox to serve as visual insight into network utilization. Read more
Have Questions about NetFlow? Ravica Can Help.
Aside from recently being blasted with swirling vortexes of terror in the form of tornoados (in New England?!), things here are going well. We recently mentioned that we have entered the NetFlow probe arena by offering nProbes and nBoxes for your business needs.
But it did occur to me that we should at least offer a brief overview of what NetFlow is.
Comparison of nBox and nProbe for NetFlow
Today’s business needs translate into massive amounts of traffic across networks, demanding mechanisms to maintain the data. In response, Cisco created NetFlow, a technology that monitors and records all traffic passing through the supported NetFlow router/switch. NetFlow has become the standard in network traffic monitoring by IT professionals, and fully utilizing it requires specialized technology.
To support this business need, we recently expanded the Ravica product line to include new hardware and software. Read more
Ravica adds NetFlow probes to product line-up
This month, Ravica branched out from our environmental monitoring roots and added a new product line of NetFlow probes to our inventory. These include two hardware options, the nBox and the nTap, as well as a software NetFlow solution, the nProbe. For today’s blog, I’ll focus in on the nBox.
NetFlow is a network protocol that was developed by Cisco Systems to collect IP traffic information and it has become the standard in network traffic monitoring by IT professionals. For more information on NetFlow, check out this blog on NetFlow basics at Systrax.com. For those without NetFlow capable routers or switches, fully utilizing NetFlow requires a probe which is generally attached to a PC and a software tool to capture the network information and put it into a usable form.
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