Monitoring network traffic

Is there a good tool that is used to monitor network traffic to try to
idenitify what may be causing slowness on the network.

That is a matter of opinion...

My opinon is "no"

Most tools only look at one "spot" on the network at a time,...often they
only see what the nic of the machine they run from sees or what a switch's
monitoring port sees. You never really see the "big picture". It can take
a lot of time and work to narrow it down to any one certain cause.

Some more expensive ($$$$$.$$) products may have "agents" installed in many
places all over the network that help broaden the "view".

One university I was in (this one was actually involved in the birth of the
Internet as we know it) has a "home grown" system that has a massive network
diagram on a massivly large LCD TV screen (60inch or better) in the very
large IT Room that lights up with different animations and colors over the
"pathes" as things "happen". But it is not commercially available and is,
like I said, "home grown". By the way,..the building next door on the
same campus is the National Institute for Super Computing,...so its a little
hard to compete with that.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
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"Marc S" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:8DFECAC2-3559-4AA5-BC3D-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Is there a good tool that is used to monitor network traffic to try to
> idenitify what may be causing slowness on the network.

If you have an extra box I would recommend checking out Cacti. It is open source and free. It utilizes SNMP to monitor traffic.. We currently utilize it to monitor all of our switches, routers, and firewalls. This can be configured to view network traffic, CPU utilization, disk I/O etc etc if setup appropriately. You have to have some *nix foo though.

Hi Marc, I use an open source application called NTOP which you can find on
google. The laptop I have it on is hooked to a HUB before the gateway and
gives me a picture of bandwidth used, sites visited, protocols used, even P2P
or other rogue applications run on my network. Because my gateway is a
router to router vpn, it picks up my traffic connectors from child domains to
us too and is very detailed in reporting. And best of all, its free, works
with Windows and other OS's and the GUI is very nice and simple but powerful.
All you need is the NTOP application, a computer with NIC and a HUB (not a
switch) and you are set. I recommend it if cost is a factor. CHUCK

"Marc S" wrote:

> Is there a good tool that is used to monitor network traffic to try to
> idenitify what may be causing slowness on the network.

Thanks!

"CHUCKH" wrote:

> Hi Marc, I use an open source application called NTOP which you can find on
> google. The laptop I have it on is hooked to a HUB before the gateway and
> gives me a picture of bandwidth used, sites visited, protocols used, even P2P
> or other rogue applications run on my network. Because my gateway is a
> router to router vpn, it picks up my traffic connectors from child domains to
> us too and is very detailed in reporting. And best of all, its free, works
> with Windows and other OS's and the GUI is very nice and simple but powerful.
> All you need is the NTOP application, a computer with NIC and a HUB (not a
> switch) and you are set. I recommend it if cost is a factor. CHUCK
>
> "Marc S" wrote:
>
> > Is there a good tool that is used to monitor network traffic to try to
> > idenitify what may be causing slowness on the network.

On Jan 30, 1:57*am, Marc S <Ma...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Thanks!
>
> "CHUCKH" wrote:
> > Hi Marc, I use an open source application called NTOP which you can find on
> > google. *The laptop I have it on is hooked to a HUB before the gateway and
> > gives me a picture of bandwidth used, sites visited, protocols used, even P2P
> > or other rogue applications run on mynetwork. *Because my gateway is a
> > router to router vpn, it picks up my traffic connectors from child domains to
> > us too and is very detailed in reporting. *And best of all, its free,works
> > with Windows and other OS's and the GUI is very nice and simple but powerful.
> > *All you need is the NTOP application, a computer with NIC and a HUB (not a
> > switch) and you are set. *I recommend it if cost is a factor. * *CHUCK
>
> > "Marc S" wrote:
>
> > > Is there a good tool that is used tomonitornetworktraffic to try to
> > > idenitify what may be causing slowness on thenetwork.

Hi,
I recommend sax2 NIDS, its real-time display and statistical traffic
analysis of whole network; you may find network resource abuse, worms,
denial of service attacks, to lead the network work well. visit
http://www.Ids-sax2.com and download sax2 to help you.