Network Packet Sniffer Tool

 

Network Packet Sniffer

An organization's network is vast with numerous nodes like servers, switches, routers, and access points. With many resources and traffic constantly passing through these nodes, it can be hard to determine if an abundance of traffic is authentic or an indication of a security attack. Having visibility into and knowledge about your organization's network traffic is crucial. A helpful resource is owning the best network packet sniffer tool.

A network packet sniffer is a tool that sniffs or captures every link passing through the network, giving you information about the top talkers. You can avoid network or security related issues since the tool will sniff the packets, record the header section, help you validate the traffic, and diagnose performance problems, whether with the routers, applications, or network.

Apart from performance-related issues, there are many advantages for your organization to use a network packet sniffer tool.

Let's now discuss some key aspects about this resource.

  • Why does your organization need a packet sniffer software?
  • How does NetFlow Analyzer play a major role as a packet sniffer?
  • What are some crucial metrics you need to determine the most benefits?

Why do you need a packet sniffing tool?

As organizations rely more on applications for basic file transfer, more traffic passes through a network. When there is even a small setback in performance, it is wise to look into the root cause of the issue to determine whether it results from the application's availability, low bandwidth, or server's high utilization. With so many aspects to look at, it can be challenging to pinpoint the origin of the issue.

Troubleshooting in these cases can take a lot of time and effort. Without visibility into the origin and path taken by the data packets, it becomes difficult to locate a problem. But using a packet sniffer, network admins can spot and resolve issues, ensuring high performance is maintained.

Check bandwidth usage

There are multiple reasons why the performance of your network might be degrading. Common reasons include employees using a lot of the available bandwidth for social media sites and degradations occurring during intervals when network software is being updated.

Non-business traffic uses often leave less bandwidth for business-critical applications to perform smoothly. But you can filter or eliminate much of this non-business type of traffic by using a network sniffer to evaluate bandwidth usage.

Check security loopholes

A software packet sniffer analyzes each packet at a granular level since it utilizes a deep packet inspection (DPI) mechanism. You can evaluate the data you want to learn about its source or destination and block or control access to specific IP addresses to maintain security.

Check the traffic and bandwidth to monitor performance and maintenance of the networks

Some queries in network traffic monitoring that bug you might be: What applications or ports and protocols are using the bandwidth? Why is the network bandwidth still not adequate even after several upgrades? How do you restrict the use of those bandwidth hog applications so that the business-critical applications have enough bandwidth?

To answer these questions, you need visibility into the traffic of each device and interface, and the capability to check how much of the available bandwidth is utilized by the particular entity.

By drilling down into the bandwidth use of every node, you can find where and what is causing the slowness, and then decide if it needs an upgrade or optimization.

Make sure the data, VoIP, video and WAN traffic performance is optimized

The benefits of your bandwidth are evident only when the quality of media-rich applications meets expectations. Your bandwidth should be free of issues like jitter, latency, and should have a short round-trip time so that there are no hiccups in productivity.

Monitoring the VoIP, WAN, and video traffic is necessary not just to ensure the health of the network, but also help you have knowledge about how your organization's network can handle the media traffic.

Get to the root of any bandwidth related issue

Most times, finding the fault in an element when the network is slow is an uphill battle. There are many reasons, like insufficient bandwidth or an application's server is having a downtime or the device misconfiguration, when the packets might not reach their destination. With a packet sniffer tool's DPI, you can know if the issue is with application or network side, and reduce the mean time to know (MTTK).

How NetFlow Analyzer is vital

Network packet sniffing software is a necessity, as it can address the above-mentioned aspects in your environment, and makes the implementation easier and results fruitful. As an advanced bandwidth monitoring and traffic analysis tool, NetFlow Analyzer helps you know your network's performance including what traffic is passing through your network, and network anomalies. You can dictate which applications should use your bandwidth, and restrict access to other links. With DPI, this tool helps secure your network and troubleshoot network congestion issues.

Network Packet Sniffer - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

Significant metrics to solve your challenges

Utilizing a tool like NetFlow Analyzer, monitoring can be extensive and effective. However, there are a few important metrics to consider while carrying out packet sniffing to achieve better security and bandwidth management.

Network Packet Sniffer Software - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

Bandwidth monitoring

  • Real-time insights into bandwidth utilization based on apps, users, and devices

  • Holistic report generation option to know enterprise bandwidth use for a custom time

  • Know the top talkers of the network by source, destination, and conversations

  • Achieve visibility into the traffic of all of your network devices even those that don't export flow using NetFlow Generator

Application traffic analysis

  • Map your organization's custom applications and find the individual traffic

  • Find the bandwidth hoggers with applications, ports and protocols traffic data

  • Group the applications, and know the cumulative traffic data at a glance

NBAR monitoring

  • Drill down to know the application traffic of Layer 7 applications with Cisco NBAR technology

  • Identify bandwidth consumed by a wide variety of applications that use dynamic ports

  • View the top applications and decide to filter or block the traffic for high productivity

QoS monitoring

  • Optimize your network's bandwidth usage by prioritizing traffic with QoS policies

  • Eliminate congestion in your network by managing QoS settings with DSCP codes

  • Validate the applied QoS policies with CBQoS traffic graphs, and make them impactful

Wireless devices traffic monitoring

  • Gain insights on traffic types of all the Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs) for types like volume, speed, and utilization

  • Get visibility into traffic for associated access points, SSIDs, Client IP, and Client MAC addresses

  • Obtain an overall picture of the top talkers such as top SSIDs, access points, WLC health maps, etc.

Anomaly detection

  • Identify internal and external security attacks such as DoS, DDoS, flash and probe attacks beforehand using the Security module

  • Detect the network anomalies by suspicious source or destination IP addresses, and block the particular traffic

  • Leverage ML-based Traffic Pattern Analysis to detect anomalies dynamically and alert, no matter how huge the traffic volume is

Want to know more about NetFlow Analyzer's benefits? Learn how our solution helped other organizations secure their network from attacks and unnecessary bandwidth upgradation investments with our resources here.

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