Like road traffic, it is essential to identify the cause of a slowdown to act and restore order. In the case of a computer network, the frustrating question that arises is: Who is monopolizing my bandwidth?
Why is the network so slow? Why is there no access to my e-mail? These are common questions users ask when the applications they use are not behaving as expected. As a system admin, network engineer or security engineer where should you start to troubleshoot such problems? One of the first checks that can be performed in this type of situations is to analyze the traffic of your network.
A Network Traffic Analysis tool lets you see the most heavily used devices, determine which users or applications use the most bandwidth and help you discover network usage trends. If you have a network monitoring tool, it is easy to know if the bandwidth usage of your network is high or if there has been a spike, but this does not mean that you can actually pinpoint what application is responsible of those spikes, that is the job of an NTA.
Is your business expanding or planning to expand? If the answer, is yes, it might be a good idea to find out if your current network infrastructure can sustain those plans. How can you find out? By being able to spot trends in your network using a Network Traffic Analyzer you will be able tell if you will need to upgrade your network or not. Being aware of how heavily used your network is at peak times will help you with the planning and management of your staff. This information is also important as it can help your team be more proactive and identify issues and bottlenecks before they happen.
Blësk’s NTA solution
Blësk’s NTA provides users with detailed information about network traffic, including traffic volume, key speakers, bandwidth consumption, and high usage times so your team can work proactively and avoid downtime, which is critical for those that count on your network. It is compatible with all data capture approaches necessary for the functionality of this type of software. It can use flow data statistics generated by routers, switches, specialized standalone hardware probes, or mirror port configuration on switches. It is compatible with all known protocol and stream ver- sions such as NetFlow, Jflow, sFlow, IPFIX, etc.
In summary, blësk NTA provides:
• A real-time dashboard
• The use of communication protocols on your network
• The list of the largest data consumer
• The protocol usage history
• The traffic received and sent from each device
To find out more about how blësk Network Monitoring can help with your network challenges, reach out to our team for a free trial or personalized demo today!
