Flow Monitor Overview
Flow Monitor is a fully integrated plug-in for all editions of the WhatsUp Gold IT management product. It gives you in-depth insight into how your network is performing and analyzes, alerts and reports on network and application traffic and bandwidth utilization in real-time.
Flow Monitor not only highlights the overall utilization of the LAN, WAN, specific device, or interface, but also indicates which users, applications and protocols are consuming bandwidth. In addition, real-time alerting will inform you of bottlenecks, network device saturation and even viruses, worms or other external attacks as they happen, so you can fix issues before your end users are impacted.
With Flow Monitor, verify the success of your network policies, ensure Quality of Service (QoS), and quickly track and resolve traffic bottlenecks. With support for NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow v1-2, IPFIX, Cisco ASA Firewalls (NSEL), NBAR and CBQoS, Flow Monitor is your one-stop-shop for network traffic and bandwidth monitoring and analysis. And if your network has non-flow enabled devices, use WhatsUp Gold’s Flow Publisher plug-in with Flow Monitor to get complete network traffic visibility anywhere in your infrastructure, without upgrading your hardware.
Action-Oriented Insight for Better Network Performance
With WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor, analyzing network traffic patterns and understanding how network bandwidth is utilized has never been simpler. Flow Monitor provides the level of insight you need to instantly identify network problems – such as which users are affecting overall performance with frequent YouTube visits or which applications simply need more bandwidth - so you can take action.
Address Security and Compliance Issues Before They Become a Problem
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor enhances network security by providing detailed reporting of ICMP errors and failed connections through protocol type (TCP and UDP) and TCP port address. This information gives you real-time indications of where external attacks may have occurred – enabling you to take action before a major security breach occurs.
This solution also ensures compliance from both a legal and licensing perspective, as it detects unauthorized file-sharing or music-sharing applications that can result in legal liability. These applications can provide a mechanism for the introduction of viruses and worms into the corporate network, so their early detection and de-installation is critical.
Real-Time Alerts and Reports So You Can Quickly React
Flow Monitor delivers powerful real-time views and historical reports to transform raw network traffic data into useful information on network trends, utilization and bandwidth consumption. In addition, receive real-time alerts on bandwidth usage violations for conversation pairs, failed connections per host, top senders and receivers or specific interfaces over time to identify problems right away.
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor integrates with all editions of WhatsUp Gold. There is no need to run a separate install – just simply refresh your WhatsUp Gold license to get a consolidated view of health, availability and performance of network devices, applications, servers and network traffic in order to quickly locate, troubleshoot and resolve issues.
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor Features
Support for Popular Flow Formats
With support for NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow v1-2, IPFIX, Cisco ASA Firewalls (NSEL), NBAR and CBQoS, Flow Monitor is your one-stop-shop for network traffic and bandwidth monitoring and analysis. You can even oversee network traffic across your non-flow-enabled devices with WhatsUp Gold Flow Publisher - without upgrading your hardware.
Visibility into Network Bandwidth Utilization
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor not only highlights the overall utilization of the LAN, WAN, specific device or interface, it also indicates which users, applications and protocols are consuming your bandwidth.
Comprehensive Reporting
Flow Monitor gives you complete visibility into real-time network usage as well as historical trends.
Threshold-Based Alerting
In conjunction with the WhatsUp Gold Alert Center, Flow Monitor makes it easy to proactively troubleshoot and resolve performance bottlenecks and eliminate malicious network behavior in real-time.
Set up multiple configurable thresholds and alerts to oversee traffic between conversation pairs, failed connections per host, top senders and receivers and more.
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor Benefits
- Understand network performance: Instantly see what traffic is on the network and how it affects your network performance. Pinpoint and troubleshoot traffic problems as they occur.
- Stay in the know: Using threshold monitors, establish operational criteria and receive alerts when abnormal or specific events occur within your network.
- Take control: Understand what parts of the network are being accessed and when to prevent misuse and enforce operational policies.
- Track changes: Review how traffic patterns have changed over time and understand the impact of routing, firewall, DNS or other configuration changes.
- Optimize business effectiveness: Gain the real-time insight you need to understand how to optimize your network to support your business objectives.
- Increase network security: Keep your network secure and ensure audit and legal compliance by detecting unauthorized music- and file-sharing applications as well as uncovering attacks directed at your network.
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor Documentation