Release Notes for NetFlow Monitor for WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1

In this File

WUG12.3.1 Release Notes for NetFlow Monitor

Release information

Product name	WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor
Version	For WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1
Release date	December 2008

About WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor

WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor provides in-depth insight into how your network is performing. Available as a fully integrated plug-in to WhatsUp Gold, the WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor allows network managers to gather, analyze and report on traffic patterns and bandwidth utilization on their networks in real-time. It highlights not only overall utilization for the LAN or WAN, specific device or interface, but also indicates users, applications, and protocols that are consuming abnormal amounts of bandwidth, --all from within the familiar WhatsUp Gold interface. WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor allows you to:

• Collect and analyze network usage information from routing devices that support NetFlow
• Watch interface usage trends and patterns
• Expose traffic patterns that may indicate problems such as denial of service attacks or port scanning
• Drill-down into reports to pinpoint traffic matching filter criteria
  • See which hosts, domain names, top level domains, user-defined groups, or countries generate or receive high volumes of traffic
  • See which protocols and applications are used to transmit the most traffic
• View snapshots of interface utilization across all of the routing devices on your network
• Discover unauthorized applications in use on your network
• Monitor the amount of inbound and outbound bandwidth used by hosts or user-defined groups
• Search across all interfaces to find traffic to or from a specific host
• Export any report view to Excel or text

To access WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor, select NetFlow Home as the Start Page when you log in to WhatsUp Gold.

Changes in WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor v12.3.1

• Improved performance and lowered memory usage
• Modified the default data roll-up options to keep data in the database for shorter period of time. This change occurs with a clean install of NetFlow 12.3.1.
• Added support for handling multiple templates in one FlowSet when using NetFlow v9
• Improved handling of out-of-sequence packets
• Corrected problem handling source names longer than 50 characters
• Increased NetFlow database initial size to 3GB (instead of 1GB) and NFArchive database to 1GB (instead of 500MB). This change occurs with a clean install of NetFlow 12.3.1.
• Changed default option to rebuild database indexes daily instead of weekly
• Improved performance when resolving and updating host names
• Corrected exception generated by the collector when attempting to enter a duplicate key
• Improved database maintenance page performance
• Corrected problem handling templates with many data streams in Netflow v9
• Corrected database exception for identity overflow
• Corrected exception that occurred when the domain names were longer than the maximum allowed in the host table
• Put safeguard in place to limit memory usage by limiting size of cached data
• Added ability to sort by columns to the Unclassified Traffic dialog.

System requirements

WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor has the same base system requirements as WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1. In addition, WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor requires:

• WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1 Standard Edition, Premium Edition, MSP Edition, or Distributed Edition
• At least one routing device that supports NetFlow version 1, 5, or 9
• SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition (optional)

  Note: WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor 12.3.1 performs well in most installations that use SQL Server 2005 Express. However, some large data collections, that require 4 GB of data storage or more or where data is collected and archived over a long period of time, may require MS SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition.

• An additional 2 to 4 GB RAM recommended
• 16 GB (required) to 22 GB (recommended) hard disk space for the databases

  Note: If using Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005, the database size is limited by available hard disk space.

Installing and Licensing

The files for WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor are installed automatically with WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1. Your license file determines whether or not you can access WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor.

To update your license to purchase WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor, visit the MyIpswitch portal.

NetFlow Collector Service port number

The default port assigned to the NetFlow Collector Service is 9999. During installation, NetFlow Monitor automatically creates an exception for this port on the Windows Firewall. If you change the default port number from the default setting, you need to change the exception port on the Windows firewall to the new port number.

Known Issues

Install/Upgrade

When installing the SQL databases for WhatsUp Gold with NetFlow be sure to use a drive with an adequate amount of space. The database files could potentially grow to 18GB, and require a minimum of 1GB for installation.

For More Information

For more information, see the WhatsUp Gold NetFlow Monitor User Guide.