NTA System Requirements
Network Traffic Analyzer requires either of the following enabled on source devices:
- Flow Export. Such as NetFlow, NetFlow-Lite, sFlow, J-flow, and IPFIX.
- SNMP. For interface traffic (when flow is not supported), NBAR, and CBQoS statistics.
Network Traffic Analyzer System Architecture
Note: The flow exporter can be either an included function of the network device, such as the NetFlow export functionality on Cisco routers, or an external probe configured to monitor one or more interfaces on the device, such as the Ipswitch NetFlow Probe.
Network Traffic Analyzer provides flow collection and analysis. Analysis can include , providing a central location for the collection, summarization, storage, and analysis of network traffic data. Once this network traffic data is observed, it is captured as flow data, and it is delivered by network monitoring protocols configured on flow export source devices. When a router or other device sends flow data to Flow Monitor, it follows the sequence demonstrated in the illustration.
- The source device (here shown as a router) observes pass though traffic and summarizes that data into a NetFlow, NetFlow-Lite, sFlow, J-Flow (sampled NetFlow) or a IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) export datagram.
- The export datagram arrives at Network Traffic Analyzer, which acts as a flow collector.
Note: sFlow data is sent every x number of packets (configurable on the sFlow device), whereas all NetFlow data is collected and monitored. This means that sFlow data provides a sampling of network traffic data, whereas NetFlow data provides all network traffic data.
- The Network Traffic Analyzer collector stores the NetFlow, NetFlow-Lite, sFlow, J-Flow (sampled NetFlow) or IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) export in the Network Traffic Analyzer database.
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