Network Traffic Management System

6 features you need in your network traffic management system

Network monitoring is vital for organizations today and a key aspect of the process is analyzing the network for uptime, availability, performance and security. As cloud and IoT technologies are increasing part of a modern IT environment, network admins have to be more vigilant about what traffic they are granting access to, including determining who is using their network and for what purposes.

A network traffic management tool helps analyze network traffic as it travels between the endpoints to determine its origin and destination. It provides reports to show how the organization's bandwidth is consumed at different intervals and by different users. An organization's requirements differ, so a comprehensive tool that enables network admins to customize requirements for their network infrastructure's is imperative.

Complete visibility

Staying aware of your network's efficiency requires deep visibility and extensive insights. When different technologies are used in an IT environment, it's even more crucial to know how your users interact internally by reviewing external WAN links. To understand unusual traffic behavior, such as why there is a traffic spike in non-business hours, the data volume being transferred, the type of file being exchanged, and finding users within the network is helpful.

Getting a clear context of your network's activity when there's congestion or a network outage requires a tool that provides end-to-end visibility of bandwidth usage. This includes visibility into every device, interface, protocols and IP addresses to break down where the issue started, and whether it is because of overutilization of bandwidth because of an application or a protocol.

At-a-glance dashboard

Most days, a network traffic management job relies on critical duties like monitoring the application servers, or configuring devices. Network's performance monitoring should be carried out as a routine, and that's where a centralized tool dashboard makes a big difference. With traffic statistics visualized in the form of graphs and charts, you gain a summary of the top performing endpoints.

IT infrastructures reflect different architectures and complexities, so a monitoring tool you can use to view with the dashboard and tailor to your requirements is crucial. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a network traffic management tool you can view through a dashboard, and ensure accessibility to it is only granted to those in the appropriate roles. Just like how each infrastructure is different in complexities and architecture, their demands can also vary. The tool you rely on should make this easier with a dashboard which you can tailor according to your requirements. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a network traffic management tools which allows you to configure the dashboard, while also helping you secure the visibility of these data with the option to grant access to only those in the appropriate roles.

Alerts to notify when problems arise

Tools are often chosen for the automation and easier troubleshooting advantages they provide. In your IT environment, there can be many aspects that can go wrong, from a device becoming unreachable, network speed becoming too slow, or even a sudden traffic spike from an entirely different region. While these incidents can be considered a typical network issue, they can also indicate a severe performance degradation or a hacking attempt. It's necessary to choose a tool that enables you to set a performance baseline, and alerts you when this baseline is not met or when its exceeded. You should be able to configure these alerts to the severity level you want to define, and how you want to be notified.

Freemium model

It can be difficult to choose the ideal network traffic management tool for your needs. Some organizations fall into an unfortunate loop of trying a high-priced product that demands a challenging learning curve, as well as an agonizing process to integrate it with the existing infrastructure. Often, they opt to try another tool, requiring additional expenditures and time investments. An ideal option is a tool that offers a freemium model enables the IT team to gain hands-on experience as it evaluates various software features to determine the advantages of integrating with their IT infrastructure.

Insights for future bandwidth provisioning

With dynamic applications used everyday, your organization's bandwidth demands might change. An effective network traffic management tool also addresses these requirements by helping anticipate and plan for future needs. An ideal tool should report on traffic statistics that depicts how your network is being used, the performance gaps, and which avenues will need more bandwidth. Efficient capacity planning can help you fine-tune an expanding budget so resources are allocated smartly.

Proven method to protect security

Protecting security with large amounts of data passing through the network requires a closer look to identify threats, and visibility across the environment. Classifying traffic that are unknown to the IT landscape is where most security systems fail. Efficiency of such security systems depends on how they identify bad actors and alert for what's not normal from the specified baseline behavior. The tool should simplify detecting today's cyberthreats that can be disguised as a normal traffic request, and alerting network traffic anomalies to correlate and report.

NetFlow Analyzer: An enterprise-grade network traffic management software

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is an end-to-end network traffic management tool based on flow technologies like NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, etc. By keeping your performance concerns front and center, our in-house experts have developed this software solution from the ground up to support your organization's growing demands. Whether yours is a hybrid or cloud infrastructure, you gain visibility into every element so you can ensure your network is efficient for your current and future needs.

NetFlow Analyzer enables you to:

  • Monitor every interface, application and IP address
  • Identify the root cause of performance issues with network forensics
  • Prioritize traffic according to their importance to your business with QoS
  • Detect internal and external security attacks with the Security module
  • Prevent your network from zero-day intrusions with network traffic anomaly detection
  • Forecast your network's requirements with Capacity Planning reports

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What customers say

Fantastic Product

Awesome product! I can't say enough about the Network Analyzer product. It does a great job helping us see traffic patterns from our production datacenter as well as all of our office locations.

-Director of IT in the Healthcare industry

Review as provided by our NetFlow Analyzer's customers to Gartner® Peer Insights™.