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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Need a quick check of bandwidth utilization on a router interface? How about SNMP Traffic Grapher (STG)? It’s available for free download on our support site under Free Tools.

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MRTG is a Multi Router Traffic Grapher that monitors network traffic and provides a live images of your network traffic.

The way MRTG works, as described by Wikipedia, is “MRTG uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to send requests with two object identifiers (OIDs) to a device. The device, which must be SNMP-enabled, will have a management information base (MIB) to look up the OIDs specified. After collecting the information it will send back the raw data encapsulated in an SNMP protocol. MRTG records this data in a log on the client along with previously recorded data for the device. The software then creates an HTML document from the logs, containing a list of graphs detailing traffic for the selected device.”

Plixer International has a variety or software that monitors network traffic.  Denika users MRTG report when monitoring and trending bandwidth usage.  It provides historical trends and real-time information on the status of network devices.  The most common use is bandwidth utilization.  However, it can be used to trend CPU, memory, hard drive space, sysUpTime, and any other SNMP OID; including non-SNMP variables (e.g. script monitoring for database activity). There is also a free Denika download.

Milton

If I got a nickel for everytime I’ve seen the symptoms shown below…I could afford to be in the Bahamas right now. But instead, I get the joy of watching all the weather alerts for the state of Maine about the incoming Nor’ Easter. *sigh*

I’m sure many of you may recognize the behavior shown in the above screenshot. You have your devices discovered by Scrutinizer, but there’s no way to know what interface it’s trending because all you see are numbers. This blog may help you out with this issue.

When you discover a device, Scrutinizer attempts to do an SNMP GET to grab definitions for the following:
- Name of the device
- Descriptions of the interfaces
- Port speed associated with each interface.

If you didn’t create a credential in Scrutinizer for your personalized community string prior to the initial discovery, then Scrutinizer would have attempted the discovery using the PUBLIC community string, and you’d be seeing symptoms much like the screenshot shows. Just a bunch of numbers…no details.

If you are certain that you are using the correct community string and yet running an SNMP update still doesn’t work, I would suggest downloading a MIB Browser called GETIF.

GETIF is a really nice 3rd party tool that I use here in the office to diagnose problems such as this.
With GETIF; just provide the IP address of the device in question, the community string that the device should be using and it will test SNMP connectivity using a generic OID.
If GETIF is able to return a value for that OID, then we know the community string that you have defined is correct. Which would turn our focus to Scrutinizer and the credential you created.
If however, GETIF fails to return a value, then we know there’s an issue with the community string that you are using.

Here’s the link to download GETIF from our website.

-Nate