Monitoring a Large-Scale Network: Selecting the

Right Tool

Sayadur RahmanUnited International University

&Network Manager, Financial

Service

OutlineSample Network TopologyNetwork Monitoring Tools

◦Cacti◦WhatsUpGold◦NetFlow

Comparisons among NMS tools

Sample Topology for Monitoring

Traffic Flow

Cacti: Graphical Monitoring Solution• Cacti is a complete open source network graphing solution

based on RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. • Cacti uses template for creating customizable graph based on

defined data source• Frontend of Cacti is PHP driven and use MySQL as database

Cacti Features Performance Monitoring Device Health Monitoring Robust Interface Graph Trend Analysis Capacity Planning Long Term Data Storage Template Based Graph

Generation

Monitoring CPU Utilization

CPU Core-Router

CPU Core-Firewall

CPU Border-Router

CPU Utilization Trend

Daily Usage

Weekly Average

Monthly Average

Internet Utilization Trend

Daily Usage

Weekly Usage

WhatsUpGold Network Performance MonitorIPSWITCH WhatsUpGold is a powerful network monitoring software that quickly detects, diagnoses and resolves network performance problems & outages.

WhatsUpGold NPM Feature Network Availability & Performance Monitoring

Intelligent Network Alerting based on Statistical Network Thresholds & Baselines

Hardware Health Monitoring

Dynamic and Customizable Network Mapping

Network Capacity Planning

Automated Web-based Network Device Discovery

Top Interface Utilization

Top Nodes Response Time

Top Nodes CPU Load

Top Nodes Memory Utilization

Network Traffic Analysis using NetFlow Analyzer

NetFlow Features Reports on Network Bandwidth usage

Traffic

Applications, Conversations, Port, Protocol

User monitoring Application monitoring Network planning and trend analysis Traffic engineering Accounting and billing Security monitoring and network forensic

NetFlow in the Network

Traffic Analysis

What is an IP Flow? Each packet that is forwarded within a router or switch is examined for a set of IP packet attributes. Traditionally, an IP Flow is based on a set of 7 IP packet attributes.

IP Packet attributes used by NetFlow:

IP source address

IP destination address

Source port

Destination port

Layer 3 protocol type

Class of Service

Router or switch interface

NetFlow Analyzer Report

NetFlow Report: Top Application

NetFlow Report: Top Source

NetFlow Report: Top Destination

NetFlow Report: Top Conversation

Common NMS Feature and Functionality Performance Monitoring Fault Management Security Monitoring Network Mapping Trend Analysis Capacity Planning Configuration Management Change Management Accounting Management Alert / Notification Syslog/ Trap

NMS Comparison

NMSBusiness Size

DeploymentUser Interface

Feature/Service

Licensing

Interoperability

Platform

Data Storage

Price

Cacti

Mid-Large Enterprise

Client- ServerGraphical UI 

Performance Trend AnalysisCapacity Planning

Open Source (GPL)

Yes - PluginLinuxUnixWindows

RRDToolMySQL

Free

WhatsUpGold

Mid-Large Enterprise

Client- ServerGraphical UIConsole

Performance Trend AnalysisCapacity PlanningTopology MapDashboardAlert, Syslog/Trap

Commercial

Yes, with native Packages

Windows MS SQLMedium Price

NetFlow Analyzer

Mid-Large Enterprise

Client- ServerGraphical UI

Traffic AnalysisCapacity PlanningDashboardNetwork ForensicAlert

Commercial

Yes, with native Packages

WindowsLinux

MS SQLMySQL

Medium Price

Q & A