Network traffic measurement

In computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management.

Tools

Various software tools are available to measure network traffic. Some tools measure traffic by sniffing and others use SNMP, WMI or other local agents to measure bandwidth use on individual machines and routers. However, the latter generally do not detect the type of traffic, nor do they work for machines which are not running the necessary agent software, such as rogue machines on the network, or machines for which no compatible agent is available.

Measurement tools generally have these functions and features:

• user interface (web, graphical, console)
• real-time traffic graphs
• network activity is often reported against pre-configured traffic matching rules to show:
  • local IP address
  • remote IP address
  • port number or protocol
  • logged in user name
• bandwidth quotas
• support for traffic shaping or rate limiting (overlapping with the network traffic control page)
• support website blocking and content filtering
• alarms to notify the administrator of excessive usage (by IP address or in total)

Some of the available tools include:

• FireBeast is a software firewall that offers bandwidth management and traffic shaping.
• Infosim supports all different network flow technologies such as Netflow, sFlow, jFlow, cFlow or Netstream.
• PRTG runs on Windows, with graphical and web interfaces. It captures packets using Cisco Netflow or packet sniffing or uses SNMP to monitor bandwidth usages.
• MRTG
• Netflow (article lists devices which generate and applications which analyse Cisco Netflow records)

See also

• Intellipool Network Monitor
• IP Flow Information Export
• Network management
• Network monitoring
• Packet sniffer
• Performance management
• Traffic shaping