Application Performance Monitoring needs to evolve from a Network Map to an Application Map.  It is amazing to me that most companies do not have a map of the applications that their business depends on.   When application performance is crawling, the network is often the first suspect.  I think the reason for this is partially because the network is the only thing documented.  Everyone knows that the network isn’t always at fault when it comes to poor application performance.  Lets fix this perception problem by starting off where the existing documentation ends.

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

I run into a lot of unique hardware working in technical support; as a result I want to write about Cisco ASA NetFlow and VPN support. Recently, I have received questions from customers wanting to monitor their VPN traffic using NetFlow. This blog will briefly cover what VPN is, and how I used our network traffic monitor for Cisco ASA VPN reporting. Read more »

Cisco’s Wireless Application Visibility and Control (AVC) has caused quite a stir of excitement due to its extensive application level visibility. On April 25th, we will present a jointly hosted webcast with Cisco Systems, on Cisco Wireless AVC and Traffic Visibility to discuss the significant capabilities and configuration of Cisco AVC.

This webcast will begin live on Thursday, April 25th at 10am (EDT) and 4pm (EDT). Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

A neat upgrade in VMwares’s vDS 5.1(vSphere) is the introduction of IPFIX.  While ESX has supported NetFlow for a long time now; with version 5.1 they have joined the long list of vendors who support IPFIX. It is a more advanced and flexible protocol that enables users to define the flow records that can be collected at the VDS and sent across to a collector.  The following are some key attributes of the protocol:

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

Apparently some of our customers are calling in asking for Astaro IPFIX Reporting support.  It’s always fun to work with a new flow vendor and in this case Sophos who acquired Astaro is exporting IPFIX instead of NetFlow.  Going with IPFIX of course was a very smart decision especially since they are exporting some interesting unique elements.

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

We figured out how to report on packet length with NetFlow.  All you have to do is enter “match ipv4 length total” in the flow record of the Flexible NetFlow Configuration .  This entry will export the element ipTotalLength   whereby the NetFlow and IPFIX reporting  tool can provide reports that look like this:

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

The Catalyst 2950 / 2960 NetFlow Support is sought after because it is one of the most prolific switches produced by Cisco.  Sometimes it seems like every company we talk to has one and since we are a NetFlow and IPFIX company, we come across a lot of consumers who want to collect NetFlow from them. Customers are in luck.

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

SonicWALL OEMs Plixer’s Scrutinizer for NetFlow and IPFIX Reporting and lands a top spot in the Gartner Magic Quadrant under the Unified Threat Management (UTM) category. Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

Most companies are taking the position that BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is allowing businesses to gain more productivity from their work force. Because of this, Mobile Workers are on the rise and it is creating a new IT challenge. “Certain bring-your-own-device strategies present certain security risks: the introduction of mobile malware onto a hospital network, for example,” said Lynne Dunbrack, IDC Health Insights program director.     Some hospitals embracing BYOD, are restricting BYOD devices to Internet access only. Why? Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

If your company is contemplating the use of traditional or next generation flow exports, the insight you can gain depending on your hardware has never been greater with our Network Traffic Monitoring Software. Without a doubt, flow elements have been added to the technology in nearly all areas of performance and security which aid in end to end visibility. Next Generation NetFlow collection and analysis requires:

List of Next Gen NetFlow / IPFIX Reporting Features:

Read more »

For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!

Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!