Plixer International is heading to London for next week’s Cisco Live 2011 tradeshow.  While I am personally not attending (and am only slightly bitter about it), I’m excited that Plixer will be able to showcase Scrutinizer 8.5, the most recent version of our NetFlow and sFlow analysis software suite.

Sponsored by Cisco Systems, Cisco Live is an annual communications conference for networkers, IT managers, developers, and service providers.  Our Product Manager and our International Sales Manager will occupy Booth E9 of the Cisco Live World of Solutions exhibition from February 1st through February 3rd. Read more »

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Do you use NetFlow for your network traffic monitoring??

If you do, but don’t always see the data the way you need for optimal network traffic analysis, just let us know. Customizing the view of your NetFlow data is the key to getting the most from NetFlow reporting.
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Sign up for Advanced NetFlow Training™ coming to a city near you!

What do these two have in common?  For most people, probably nothing.

But here at Plixer International, the last business day before the Christmas holiday break, it has been customary to set up a game server with the Quake game on it.

Everyone brings some yummy food to share (brownies, meatballs, cheese & crackers, are some of the options), and for a few hours of the day, work takes a back seat to eating and gaming.

Personally, playing Quake isn’t my idea of a good time.  Chasing opponents down dark hallways shooting at them, screams and blood.  Not for me.

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

Using Flexible NetFlow (FnF) to configure user defined templates, you have the ability to export layer 2 information such as MAC address, fragment identification and VLAN ID’s.

Using the right NetFlow and sFlow Analysis tool, gives you the ability to fully report on those user defined fields set up in the Flexible NetFlow templates.

Included in the reporting engine in Scrutinizer v8 is an advanced filter that lets you filter any report on any field found in the exported NetFlow template. 

Scrutinizer is currently the only product on the market that lets you do this.

Using the Advanced Filter, lets see how we can use those layer 2 user defined fields to filter a Conversation report on a MAC address and then exclude an interface from the report.

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You probably have NetFlow enabled on your network devices, but the question is, are you truly taking advantage of what it offers? From working in technical support, I noticed, although NetFlow technology is evolving rapidly, when it comes to understanding how the technology works and how much can be accomplish with it, many users are staying behind. Today I want to give you a few tips. Read more »

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

Are you looking for more information from your NetFlow reports?  Such as MAC Address and Cisco NBAR information?

Flexible NetFlow can provide that information for you.  So the next question is, “How do I configure FnF on my router?“.

And here are a couple of great resources to assist with configuring Flexible NetFlow:

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In a recent blog post I talked about how our NetFlow and sFlow Analysis tool displays and stores flow data that has been exported from routers and switches. The amount of data that you are ultimately able to store is totally dependent on the amount of disk space available to the data directory MYSQL is configured to use.

How do we manage this disk space?

Just after midnight Scrutinizer automatically launches a number of service routines that perform specific maintenance functions. One of those functions is to expire and clear old history tables. Data history tables are expired based on configurable data history settings defined in the Scrutinizer application. If a data history table is older than the configured retention period for the table type, it is dropped or expired.

The application is designed to issue an alarm and an LED warning when the available disk space drops below 2GB. If unaddressed, the collector service will then shutdown when the available disk space falls below 500MB. This will turn the services LED red, signifying that a service has stopped.

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Defrag your hard drive!

As mentioned in Scott’s blog,  “Getting the most from your NetFlow and sFlow Analysis Tool“, disk fragmentation can be the primary cause for slow performance in running NetFlow reports.

Due to the large volume of data stored when collecting NetFlow packets, disk I/O may already be pushed to the limits on your server.  Add to that a highly fragmented disk drive and you might as well go hang out at the water cooler while you wait for your report to run.

Here’s an example of an extremely fragmented disk:

As Scott mentioned in his blog, “With hard drives, blue is a good thing, red is bad. Ideally we would want to see mostly blue and white.”

But, on the other hand,  if you don’t have anything better to do with your time, if using Scrutinizer has so streamlined your network monitoring that you need to slow your day down a bit, then please, leave your disk fully fragmented and take a break!

Otherwise, if you prefer your Netflow reporting to complete in your lifetime, then defrag!

And in the spare time that you now have to kill, you can monitor excessive Facebook traffic and other odd traffic patterns on your network, or read our blogs to learn how to enable Flexible NetFlow, or give us a call to find out what else our NetFlow solution can do for you.

- Joanne

Has your company adopted a social media policy yet?  Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are increasingly being considered threats for at least a couple big reasons:  security risks and traffic risks.

Use of social medias at work can pose security risks to the company’s intellectual property through an employee’s personal communication habits.  On occasion, attackers assume the identity of someone who hasn’t actually joined sites like facebook.  Then the attacker determines who this person’s friends or schoolmates are and sends friend requests.  Once befriended, the attacker has personal information of users and can make targeted attacks.  Social engineering tactics like this can be very effective, especially when they get users to start sharing URLs leading to malicious sites or spoofs of actual businesses such as your local bank.  In some countries, criminals are not banned from using sites like facebook when they are incarcerated, as The Washington Times recently reported.

Use of social medias at work can also pose network traffic problems for the company.  Read more »

You’re in the market for a NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.  What are the key features that you’re looking for?  What makes one NetFlow analyzer stand out from the rest?  Do you have a list of “must haves”?

Such as support for Flexible NetFlow, IPFIX reporting, portable network maps?  How about automated NetFlow configuration on your routers and switches?  Is customization of the web interface important to you?  Multiple language support critical?
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