SUNY Geneseo Network Manager Rick Coloccia found that analyzing Cisco NetFlow packets was the key to network traffic management and monitoring internet use and abuse.

Using Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer, he was able to respond to the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) allegations of students illegally downloading or sharing of music.
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I don’t remember where we saw it, but there was a report that stated there were 102 unique vendors that released a NetFlow tool in 2008.

I don’t know how accurate that is, but I can definitely confirm that if you go to Google.com and search the key word NetFlow, you’re going to get a LONGGGGGGGG list.

So with a plethora of options and little time to evaluate, what does Scrutinizer offer that might make it worth…scrutinizing? (Sorry, couldn’t help it)

Here’s five compelling reasons to take a look at my product:

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Thanks to Jimmy D, our renowned International Sales Channel Manager, we have a proven solution for monitoring NetFlow traffic for home users.

A situation arose for Jim where his wife and daughter would be in Florida caring for his parents while he was still here in Maine. The geek that he is, he didn’t want distance to keep them apart.

So he decided to provide voice, video, and network monitoring while they were in Florida. To achieve this, he decided to set up a small embedded server rack in his parents’ Florida home. This would allow for VoIP, Video, network traffic monitoring, and a web server.

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The following article, “Scrutinizer Brings Flow Analytics to SMBs“, written by David Diaz, was recently featured on TechCrunchIT.

David points out that with the low initial cost for Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer, it is a very affordable Flow Analytics solution for small and medium-sized businesses.

This flow analysis tool can also be deployed centrally and accessed globally via the web interface.  What this means is that one install of Scrutinizer can provide network management information for your entire network and accessible by everyone on the network management team, regardless of geographical location.

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Plixer International, your team of friendly neighborhood NetFlow specialists, has just released the newest version of Flowalyzer, our NetFlow and sFlow configuration tool. In addition to some performance and usability enhancements, version 2.0 adds a new tab to the Flowalyzer interface.

Flowalyzer version 2.0 introduces The Trender

The latest addition to the Flowalyzer tool is the Trender tab, which creates graphs for critical Windows resources, all done in real-time (a configurable update period that defaults to once every second). The Trender uses SNMP information gathered from your compliant gear to measure metrics from interface utilization to CPU or memory consumption. There is no limit to the number of metrics you can trend simultaneously (aside from the obvious limitation of screen real estate).

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Jon Mills
Marketing & Public Relations Manager
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Have you heard about exporting egress NetFlow? Do you want to know why it is different from ingress NetFlow or more importantly, when to implement it for network traffic monitoring? I’ll cover this topic in today’s blog. Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Hello everybody! My name is Paul Dube and I have recently graduated from the University of Maine in Orono with a degree in Computer Science and joined the support team here at Plixer International. Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve been trying to learn everything there is to know about Scrutinizer, NetFlow, sFlow and network traffic analysis. During this process I’ve come across a lot of great resources that I would like to consolidate into one place to help you get started.
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Thinking outside of the box can produce some innovative ideas.

While the network maps in Scrutinizer can make the traffic flow on your network easier to visualize and congested links quicker to spot, adding more visual definition to your maps will make them more user friendly and understandable by more members of your organization.

So how do you spice up your NetFlow data and breathe some life into your network utilization maps? Try combining a tool created for home design with a network monitoring tool to create incredible network maps.

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If you put a price tag on network monitoring for your organization, what would it be? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000?

And what needs to be included in that price? Staff to support the network? Network Monitoring hardware and software? Office space to house the staff and equipment?
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How do you know if the NetFlow collector is saving or even getting all of the NetFlow datagrams that are being sent to it or that it is receiving? It is important to know if any flows are missing.

Why do we care?

This is a great question. We care because a loss of flow exports is usually caused by one of three things:

1. The network dropped some packets
2. The router can’t keep up
3. The NetFlow receiver / collector can’t keep up

NetFlow sequence numbers are becoming increasingly important. When building a NetFlow collector it is important that the engine scales while staying accountable. If you look at the NetFlow v9 packet format you will notice something called the package_sequence.

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