We are excited to announce our new community support web site: http://www.systrax.com

Basically this is an on-line support web site for plixer customers where ideas can be shared and problems resolved.  It has links to training videos, a searchable forum as well as traditional stuff like FAQs and the product manuals.    It is still in the early stages as it was just released but, we didn’t want to delay any longer.

It largely revolves around NetFlow and sFlow setup and configuration but, we included our SNMP and syslogs products as well – Denika and Logalot.

Any feed back is great.  What can we add?

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Hello Everyone,

I’m in Florida meeting with a customer regarding a Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer installation. I brought the family along as I decided to check out the Florida Keys.

My girls got me up early one morning to do some fishing off the pier. Pretty soon we had some pelicans come visit us and we decided to feed them fresh fish. Watch the video, I hope you enjoy it.

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
Follow Me on Twitter

I’ve been working with some customers over the last few months and it seems that in some configurations with Riverbed gear, determining outbound utilization via ingress traffic from other interfaces is overstating actual utilization.  Has anyone else run into this?

We have a solution but, thought I’d put this comment out there.   Basically, NetFlow v9 with Egress becomes important.

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
Follow Me on Twitter

Plixer international offers a number of different services and products for their clients, but one of their most popular and powerful is Scrutinizer. The Scrutinizer program, now in its sixth version, is one of the top programs when it comes to providing data on where website traffic is coming from, what application was used, when the visitor visited the website, and more. Its very useful in determining how much traffic a network is using and when excessive bandwidth is being used.

Scrutinizer makes use of any NetFlow routers or switches to scan a network for open ports and then logs the amount of traffic coming or going from those ports. If you have NetFlow or sFlow (software included on many routers), all you have to do is enable them and Scrutinizer does the rest! No extra software or probes necessary. The color-coded report shows you which routed ports are overloaded and which are nearly free. It shows which protocols users are running or, conversely, the number of protocols and number of users per protocol.

The program contains a number of different options as well. For example, Scrutinizer can be set to save raw data from your network every minute, every few minutes, every hour, every day, or every week. Once you have the raw data recorded, Scrutinizer can give you an amazing number of graphs and other visual reports. These color-coded charts present data in several easy to grasp ways, allowing you to quickly see all peak network times and any periods of excessive bandwidth usage. Plus, Scrutinizer can email any number of users with these reports on a scheduled basis, so you dont even have to manually request the information. If you do want to manually request a report, you can do it from any computer by accessing your networks Scrutinizer website.

As you can see, Scrutinizer really makes, well, scrutinizing your networks traffic incredibly easy. Want another reason to give Scrutinizer a chance? You can download a free version to try out the program before upgrading!

Hello,  I’m new to blogging and looking forward to discussing some of the issues we face as as a NetFlow and SNMP software development company.  Currently we are deep in the throws of Scrutinizer v7 which promises to deliver on many features requested by hundreds of customers.  I can’t get into specifics right now but, I will say the v7 is largely a rewrite of much of the tool.   More to come…..

Mike

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
Follow Me on Twitter

I know that sometimes figuring stuff out for your company can be difficult. I mean, I have spent hours chasing down rather simple IP and technical problems that shouldnt have been that big a deal. But the fact is, they can be a real time suck, and thats just plain annoying. Between running around the office trying to simply put out fire and then moving on to go ahead and take care of all of the normal business paperwork just to stay on top of the game, Im pretty sure that I lost my sanity in there for a brief moment or two. I was stuck. I knew that I couldnt afford to hire a full time IT crew, but without them it seemed that I was going to be destined to stay in this horrible cycle.That was all before I learned about www.plixer.com and all of the amazing things they could do in such a short amount of time. I mean, who knew that one compromised system could do so much damage and could create so much havoc with the rest of my small companys network? I sure didnt and it was just one of the things that I was constantly trying to fix and rehabilitate. www.plixer.com identified it very quickly and was able to offer me everything that I needed without all of the hassle that you usually associate with this kind of thing.

The best part about all of it is that for the stuff I didnt understand www.Plixer.com was there to offer me and my associates all of the training information that we needed to stay on top of the programs and utilize all of the things that they offered in a manner that most closely benefited the company. Now between the increased speed in my computer network and my users programs and the extra time that I have on my hands I finally feel like the company is starting to grow and expand into something that is closer to what I originally imagined.