Network Traffic Analysis: impress your bosses and make life easier

Network Traffic Analysis gives you x-ray vision

One of the most useful things to have in your network monitoring toolkit is the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA). It collects and processes network flow data (commonly available through features such as Cisco’s NetFlow) to give you x-ray vision into your network traffic. This includes:

* Port level analysis of applications consuming bandwidth

* End-points (‘talkers’) consuming bandwidth by port

* Bandwidth consumption by end-point or application over time

Pretty easy to see how this would be useful, right? But just in case you are way past your last energy drink and lacking in imagination, let’s list seven ways this can make your life easier.

#1: Smart Working

Network Traffic Analysis gives you in-depth application monitoring and bandwidth utilization capabilities. This new visibility lets you provide insights to management you just can’t get with network device monitoring alone. These insights can positively impact day-to-day operations.

For instance, you can accumulate data for a week and verify bandwidth utilization between your corporate headquarters and branch offices. Let it run for a month and you have a good picture of just how much of the bandwidth you are paying for is being used. Management likes to know that IT pros are contributing to the business and this level of visibility just makes you look a lot smarter.

#2: Who is playing games or watching videos

Some of your peers may see you as “Big Brother” once they realize you can produce reports that show who is playing games, visiting porn sites or streaming movies when they are supposed to be working. But research has shown that when employees know someone is watching, they misbehave a lot less and productivity goes up.

It’s only fair to let people know you have this capability before you actually start using it. It won’t advance your career to discover that the CEO is the biggest culprit.

#3: Optimize performance

Maybe you already know who is streaming video or playing games. But do you know how that impacts key applications and services? Network Traffic Analysis shows you how much bandwidth is consumed by which users/apps at what times. It is a simple matter to see spikes in video usage stealing bandwidth from a core business application.

If users complain about response times while someone is streaming videos, you have a simple path to a clear win. And, oh BTW, this also makes you look sharp to your bosses.

#4: Blast through traffic jams

Network Traffic Analysis gives you a ready tool for a quick deep dive into the underlying causes of network slowdowns. Especially if you are continuously collecting and analyzing traffic data.

As an example: One IT pro set up a new company-wide, anti-Spam software solution with the most up-to-date signature libraries stored on their corporate servers. After the installation was complete, they noticed that the link to the branch office was experiencing high utilization nearly every hour. Their NTA software quickly detected that client machines from the remote sites were all communicating with the anti-Spam server for updates at the same time. Problem solved! They staggered the update requests over the span of a few minutes and eliminated the utilization bottleneck.

#5: Gain move/adds/changes superpowers

How about the user who relocated their finance and accounts staff from one floor to another? The move required a different subnet and they decommissioned an old router in the process. Unfortunately, a few of the workstations were still configured to be part of the old network. Right after the move they saw an increase in the amount of bounced traffic between these workstations and the default gateway.

With Network Traffic Analysis they knew exactly which workstation part of the routing was loops and that made it easy to rectify the configuration and get the new network to settle down smoothly.

#6: Spot cyber-attacks as they happen

Imagine arriving at work one morning and seeing there are many failed connections on your main router. You also note that this pattern had persisted for a couple of hours. Network Traffic Analysis displays that all the transmissions are from a few IP addresses outside your network. It’s a classic case of a portscan - an external attack looking for vulnerable open ports on your router firewall.

About Ipswitch

With over 1 million users from tens of thousands of companies managing more than 150,000 networks in 192 countries, Ipswitch designs and develops industry-leading software that enables the easy delivery of 24/7 performance and security across cloud, virtual and on-premise environments. IT teams worldwide rely on 25 years of innovation to optimize and secure business transactions, applications and infrastructure with Ipswitch MOVEit® secure file transfer, Ipswitch WhatsUp® Gold network monitoring and Ipswitch WS_FTP®. Available directly or through strategic alliances with leading IT vendors and the company's fast-growing global partner ecosystem, Ipswitch's wide portfolio improves application and network performance, monitors diverse IT environments and ensures secure exchange of data that meets PCI, HIPAA, GDPR and other industry and government data security and regulatory requirements.

The company has offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. For more information, visit https://www.ipswitch.com/ or connect on LinkedIn and Twitter. To learn about Ipswitch's strategic alliances or global network of partners, visit https://www.ipswitch.com/partners.

Alessandro Porro
Senior Vice President, Ipswitch