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.

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When considering Ipswitch’s WhatsUp Gold Vs. Solarwinds Orion it is important to start off by listing the features that are important to maintaining optimum network performance for your business.  Clearly both are capable of monitoring networks.  Both vendors maintain a PDF files:

• Solarwinds: [SolarWinds Orion vs. WUG]
• Ipswitch: [WUG_vs_Orion_v9] and the [Orion_North America_DeepDive]

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Our NetFlow Analyzer for the iPhone takes Network traffic monitoring to a whole new dimension. Aside from receiving  email alerts on network threats, you now have the ability to dive into NetFlow Analysis right on your iPhone. From anywhere, get detailed information on your network traffic, and quickly initiate an informed response to network threats.

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Network Intrusion Detection, Cyber Threats, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Polymorphic Malware, Event Correlation – today all of these terms are foremost on many IT Security Professionals minds. What cyber security layer can we add to our existing protection efforts that will bring us greater peace of mind? Read more »

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A month ago I was on a call with a hardware vendor that exports flows and he asked “What else should we be exporting with NetFlow v9?”.   This is a great question and fortunately almost any information observed by the flow exporter or passing through it can be exported in NetFlow v9 or IPFIX.

Generally we recommend IPFIX to send the information over older technologies such as SNMP traps or syslog.  A big differentiator is that with IPFIX, we can stuff multiple messages into the same datagram while keeping the data structured which leads to faster event correlation and improved network threat detection.  I told him that the items we hear the most demand for from NetFlow are:

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Many Network Management Solutions on the market lack support for sFlow, NetFlow and IPFIX reporting and threat detection.  If you are looking for EM7 NetFlow support, our NetFlow solution easily integrates with EM7 from ScienceLogic and we do it in 3 ways to provide the best network traffic monitoring solution.
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Good News!  Plixer is growing and we have several positions open in Sales, Support and Software Development.  Plixer International is one of the fastest growing network traffic monitoring companies in the industry. Founded in 1999, Plixer works with some of the largest networks in the world. Our solutions provide a holistic view of the entire enterprise regardless of equipment vendor. Our software engineers work directly with customers to ensure that the tools quickly help pin point bottlenecks and security threats.

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Apparently there are quite a few YAF IPFIX deployments out there. We recently had to test this software for a customer.  YAF stands for Yet Another Flowmeter which promotes the use of SiLK for some rudimentary threat detection.  Flow Analytics(TM)  can be used for more sophisticated network threat detection.  YAF can be placed off a spanned switched port and used as a NetFlow probe to improve network traffic monitoring  however, the metrics collected are not nearly as sophisticated as the nBox.

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Deep Application Awareness is the ability to accurately identify different applications within a business.  What makes it difficult is that each application could be sharing the same ports.  A company that understands how bandwidth is being consumed, by who and how it is prioritized can optimized organizational performance.

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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.

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