I was talking with our newly appointed Pre-Sales Support Specialist, Scott, the other day when we realized that we don’t have a NetFlow Glossary blog, so I wanted to take this opportunity to consolidate some resources and highlight some of the key NetFlow terminology that we find ourselves talking about on a daily basis.

NetFlow Terminology:

Bidirectional Flows
Flexible NetFlow
Ingress vs. Egress
Interface 0
ip-flow timeout active 1
IPFIX
ip route-cache flow vs. ip flow ingress
NBAR
NetFlow Collector and Analyzer
NetFlow Exporters
NetFlow Options Templates
NetFlow Probe
NetFlow Replicator
NetFlow v5 vs. v9
NSEL
sFlow

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Paul Dube
Technical Support
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The other day I took an interesting call from a customer who was concerned because he was suddenly seeing his flows per second count almost double. He had just upgraded his Scrutinizer NetFlow and sFlow traffic analysis application to the latest version and he thought that maybe something had changed to cause this to happen.

I assured him that nothing in the Scrutinizer upgrade would have caused him to see his flow count increase. And after talking with him, I learned that he had also just upgraded the IOS on his routers.

Were we looking at some kind of a ”perfect storm“ scenario?

Of course not!

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Hello all, today I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite features in Scrutinizer that helps aid in NetFlow traffic monitoring; the MyView dashboard.  The MyView page is a fully customizable dashboard that allows each user to have their own unique view of what’s happening on the network which allows administrators to be proactive instead of reactive.

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Paul Dube
Technical Support
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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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Well it looks like our run of nice weather has ended here in Southern Maine. Saturday we had our first snow of the year. It was kind of a nice touch to be at a holiday party and have the snow falling outside. And then to wake up Sunday morning to find that the view outside your window is like that of a Currier and Ives winter print.

A couple of weeks ago I began a series of blogs that introduces you to the new Flow Analytic tools that are available with Plixer International’s latest NetFlow and sFlow analysis tool, Scrutinizer v7.3.

Today I will be introducing you to the third of the four new analytic tools now available with Scrutinizer v7.3. The Breach Attempt Violation looks for many small flows from one source to one destination. This can indicate things such as a “brute force” or “dictionary” attack. 

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Many companies are primarily concerned with Internet security threats.  I feel that majority of security threats are derived internally. According to Forrester Research, the majority of security breaches involve internal employees, with some estimates as high as 85 percent. Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager

With the release of Scrutinizer v7.2 last month we offered an upgrade/migration path for those customers running Scutinizer v6. I have had some customers ask, “Why should we upgrade” or “What will we gain from Scrutinizer v7 that we don’t have now?”

The updated release of Plixer’s network traffic analyzer last week made the answer to that question very clear.

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After a lot of work, we have support in Scrutinizer v7.3 with Flow Analytics for NBAR with Flexible NetFlow.  My contact at Cisco Jean-Charles <below> gave us some help. I wish we had him as a resident Cisco NBAR and NetFlow expert.  Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager

Plixer International, developers of a market leading NetFlow and sFlow analysis tool set, today released Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer version 7.3, bringing network traffic analysis software to the next level.

With the latest release of their NetFlow analyzer, Plixer has introduced several new report types, including NBAR reports. Cisco’s NBAR technology does deep packet inspection into the traffic moving through the router to identify the applications being used by hosts. For example; H323, Telnet, RTP, Exchange and Skype are identified and exported in NetFlow.

“We feel, and have felt for some time, that Flexible NetFlow has the potential to expand greatly on the level of information that can be reported on by standard NetFlow,” says Plixer CTO, Marc Bilodeau. “With Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer version 7.3, Plixer is leading the pack in not only the adoption of Flexible NetFlow, but in the implementation of its key advantages over other versions of NetFlow.”

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Jon Mills
Marketing & Public Relations Manager
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“What do I get with the enterprise version of Scrutinizer?”

I’ve been getting this question frequently, so I figured: Why not write a quick blog?

Since Flow Analytics and Scrutinizer v7 have a fantastic symbiotic relationship, lets consider seven reasons to upgrade your free version to include a licensed copy of Flow Analytics.

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