Our development team has been working hard and we are pleased to announce the release of Plixer Tools 8.0.0. What’s Plixer Tools you ask? We’ve combined Denika, Logalot, WebNM, and Flowalyzer into a single installer to provide better integration with Scrutinizer.
PaulFor a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
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.
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).
BrianFor a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
To celebrate the release of Version 7.0 of Scrutinizer NetFlow and sFlow Analyzer, which is absolutely free, I thought I’d share with you three fabulous free resources for Cisco network administrators. Read more »
If you use both our Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer and Denika Performance Trender tools to help meet your network management goals, you can integrate some of the Denika functionality into Scrutinizer.
This integration can include a link directly from the Status page of Scrutinizer to the Denika reports for a device. You can also use Denika reports in Scrutinizer maps.
We’ve been working harder than ever on the new Plixer release of Scrutinizer v.7. We have set the bar really high with some aggressive goals. To help out with our monumental tasks, we’ve hired a consultant. She comes highly recommended and has a skill set and work ethic to match the rest of the Plixer development team.
I’ve shadowed this extremely talented programmer to try to get insight into how she is going to help us improve our cutting edge network monitoring applications.
Meet our newest team member: Liliana Duran.
SteveFor a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer has some of the best third-party integration in the industry. Did you know that you can put a Scrutinizer link in the WhatsUp Gold device report page that will take you right into the Scrutinizer Top Conversations tab of that device? Yes, you can.
Did you know that you can also add Scrutinizer content to your workspace to show the top 10 interfaces?
Integration with WhatsUp Gold and Scrutinizer is easy and awesome. Visit the WhatsUp Gold – Scrutinizer integration page on our website for detailed instructions on how to do it.
If you don’t have WhatsUp, but have another application you would like to integrate, check out our Network Monitoring Application Integration page to see what else you can integrate with.
Steve
For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
Every morning begins the same way: I come into the office, boot up my laptop, get my coffee and then start on my daily responsibilities.
As I’m sitting at my desk replying to various e-mails and such, Milton decides to talk to himself.
Now when I say that he’s talking to himself, I really mean that he’s talking to everyone in a 10-foot radius, but he’s the only one who understands what he’s talking about.
Here’s a sample of how it goes:
Milton: “There are two girls on the page now…”
Me: “I’m sorry, what?”
Milton: “Who is the new girl on the website?”
Me: “What are you talking about? What girls, what website?”
Milton: “For our blogs…”
Me: “mhrmmmm.” (This is me trying to terminate the conversation)
I’m going to stop there…
That is a common morning conversation scenario with my buddy Milton. If you are confused about this conversation, you are not alone. With Milton starting conversations like we’ve been talking for an hour, he always manages to get a reply out of me, even if it is one of confusion.
I use Milton as an example of how a FIN port scan works.
First think of Milton as a port scan designed for Linux boxes. Milton will first send a conversation to the port using the FIN TCP flag to trick the port into thinking that Milton has been speaking to it all along. After all, the FIN flag is the tag used to FINISH a conversation.
If the port that Milton is talking to is closed, the port replies to Milton with a RST flag. That’s like me saying “mhmmm” just to end the conversation.
However, if the port is open, the conversation packet is quietly discarded, since the conversation is over. But this is exactly what Milton is looking for. If he doesn’t get that RST flag he knows there is a service listening in on that port.
Now that he’s found an open port, he can say what he wants and your server will listen.
Now that you understand how the FIN port scan works; does anyone have an Aspirin?
Plixer International is proud to present the YouTube debut of Mix Master Mitch’s first single, “NetFlow Rap”.
Enjoy!
Lyrics
Workin’ in IT’s a breeze
Got my chair back, feet up, crossing my knees (cuz I’m feelin’ it)
Got the collector running data, it’s reelin’ it
Writing data to mySQL, there’s no sense concealing it
Because I got it Scrutinized
A Big Mac, super sized
Just spent 9 grand, now all my NetFlow’s analyzed
Finally realized I needed a tool
Called up the Plixer and they took me to school
Engineer’s on site, and if that wasn’t enough
Even set me up to integrate their stuff with WhatsUp
Tables charts and graphs galore
Signed up for the webinar and learned that there was even more
Now I can run a report
And find out which cohorts are busy building heavy forts on my ports
Check my Top Conversations every single minute
Now when there’s a network battle, instantly I win it
There’s not another tool on the market to top this
I got a group and a flash map for every office
Now when I’m off eating crawfish
An alarm is set off, and I will know, so I can instantly stop this
So go to triple dub dot plixer.com
And download it off the web – don’t need a CD-ROM
So get a demo let them show you the tool
Cuz nobody thinks its cool to be the “I don’t know fool”
Go go to Plixer and they won’t steer you wrong
Then you too could sit back and listen to this song
But if you don’t go, I won’t be help responsible
When you get busted by the network constable
So just download and play today
They even have a free version if you don’t want to pay
Case in point, get your network fixed
And I know just the guy to do it, it’s the plkixey plix
You need this, in any given network today
Don’t know how you’ve been livin’ with no NBA
If every day you fall victim to performance paralysis
I don’t know why you think you don’t need behavior analysis
So if you’re waitin’, procrastinatin’, hesitatin’, and tool debatin’
You can escape from the fake statement you’re statin’ and makin’
It’s frustrating, making mistakes, because you’re pacin’ and waitin’
For the boss to stop flaking, wake up and stop the budget breaking
So many vowel sounds that now my head is aching
May fall off because it’s loose, just like the feet of Kevin Bacon
But back to the track and the point that I was makin’
Hold up, there’s a phone call that I’m about to be takin’
(hello)
There’s a radio station, somebody listens to it
But there’s an issue because there’s not enough legit bandwidth
We can resolve this real quick, just ran a report and found out that it’s Chris
Went to his cubicle and said Chris what’s this
The T1 is lit, the boss is pissed and pitching a fit
What’s that? How did we find out about it?
With the Plixer Flow Analytics
I spit this, just like a baby spits spinach
Flow Analytics will finish your decision, due to the features within it
Competition watching – chances of winnin’ business diminish
Like they were presidential running mates of Dennis Kucinich.
For a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
Does your curiosity ever extend to how Plixer International began? When the company was formed, why it was named Plixer, where the idea of the company was born?
Well, if so, then read on……
Read more »
Hello Everyone,
If you would like to see other blogs on how to setup IP SLAs check out these links.
IP SLA – Jitter – 1 of 4
IP SLA – ICMP Echo – 2 of 4
IP SLA – TCP Connect – 3 of 4
We’ve arrived at the fourth and final part of this series. In this blog, we’re talking about the Cisco HTTP IP SLA operation and some ways that it can be useful.
The HTTP IP SLA operation is a very useful tool in the verification of performance of Web servers, Proxy servers, or any other HTTP server.
There are 3 measurements that will provide a total round trip time measurement for the HTTP operation:
• DNS lookup: How much time it takes to complete a domain name lookup.
• TCP Connect: How much time it takes to complete a TCP connection to the HTTP server.
• HTTP transaction time: How long it took to send a request and get a response from the HTTP server.
A good use for this monitor is to confirm that performance stays within the acceptable limits of an SLA and also to gauge your user’s perceptions as to how fast the connection is.
The HTTP IP SLA operation can also be used to monitor proxy servers. One is example is with a VRRP deployment where there is an HTTP proxy server involved. If the HTTP IP SLA operation reports a failed connection to the proxy server, a failover process can be initiated automatically so that a secondary router continues to forward all HTTP requests to the proxy server.
The DNS lookup time is an important factor to a good overall user experience.
“How MySpace is hurting your network”, a Networkworld.com article, explains how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook may exponentially increase the number of DNS lookups, impacting the performance of your network. You may want to check out your netflow analyzer to see whether too many users are checking out these sites.
Cisco IP SLAs can make a huge difference in how well network administrators can increase efficiency of their network. Pair Cisco IP SLAs with Netflow, good SNMP and Netflow Analyzing applications and you’ll have a winning combination of tools to make sure your network is well tuned.
Thanks for reading this series, good luck and have fun setting up the IP SLAs!
Sincerely,
SteveFor a free 30 day trial of Scrutinizer, Download Now!
Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!
