Network Traffic Analysis

Network traffic analysis is the process of collecting and examining network data to understand and improve the performance of your network. Network traffic analysis can allow you to identify bottlenecks in your network causing slowdowns or may soon impact quality of service for end users. 

Network traffic analysis is often focused on leveraging flow data for insights into bandwidth usage across your network. Networks are designed with a limited amount of bandwidth. When an array of applications, endpoints, and users are using this bandwidth, performance issues can arise. 

With network traffic analysis, you can identify bandwidth-consuming applications, users, protocols, or IP address groups, also known as “top talkers.” In this way, network traffic analysis can help you avoid overloading your network capacity and ensure end-user experience is satisfactory. 

Network traffic monitoring typically focuses on collecting and analyzing flow data and quality of service data, which means leveraging NetFlow data. NetFlow, a network protocol developed by Cisco in the 1990s, is used for gathering and monitoring IP traffic statistics. You can use this information to take a closer look at traffic flow in your network. NetFlow data reveals the source and endpoint of traffic, and the levels of traffic being generated. 

How does NetFlow monitoring work? Routers with NetFlow enabled will automatically generate NetFlow records from different data sources on the network, including applications, internal and external endpoints, conversations, site data, and more. NetFlow data isn’t useful in its raw form—you must use NetFlow collectors and analyzers to transform raw data into actionable data with a user-friendly format. These collectors can be hardware-based probes or software-based tools.

For instance, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a software-based NetFlow collector designed to help you understand how network and bandwidth usage affect your network. By leveraging NetFlow, NTA provides an overview of your network traffic and reveals how users are affecting your bandwidth. 

The first step in analyzing network traffic is monitoring and collecting relevant NetFlow data, as described above. The next step is organizing and examining this data to reveal critical insights and patterns. 

Network traffic analysis involves identifying the bandwidth hogs on your network. Is your network slowdown caused by applications or users? Are you distributing bandwidth effectively across your network? What are the top talkers on your network and how can you minimize their impact? Network traffic analysis can help users answer these questions by not only showing what’s using up bandwidth, but also by offering insights into how bandwidth usage issues can be addressed. 

For effective analysis, you may also correlate and compare flow data and other relevant information from many different network sources. This practice can be especially helpful if you know the time of a network slowdown. Instead of manually going through each data source to see which one was responsible at the time, a feature to cross-reference multiple data sources on a single timeline can help you drill down on performance issues more quickly. 

Overall, the network analysis process can yield several insights about the state of your network, including the following statistics:

• Bandwidth usage by application
• Bandwidth usage by type of traffic
• Usage patterns over time
• Performance statistics and end-user experience

Thanks to insights from network traffic analysis, you should be able to take more effective troubleshooting action in a range of specific cases. For instance, after using a network traffic analysis tool to get a bird’s eye view of your network, you might discover you need to take resources from one application and donate them to another or shut down one application altogether to preserve your bandwidth. 

Network traffic analysis is important because it’s a core part of network performance monitoring best practices. Network traffic analysis helps ensure your network’s bandwidth is functioning properly, and if not, it helps you take measures to rectify the problem. 

Network traffic analysis is also useful for capacity planning and resource allocation. In the midst of a slowdown, flow data analysis can tell you which applications are hogging resources and which are suffering from the lack of adequate distribution. You can use this information to divert resources more appropriately and clear up congestion. 

Network traffic analysis is useful even if your network is running smoothly. For instance, routinely checking in on your network traffic can give you critical insight into whether you’ve set up your network efficiently. If applications, users, and IP addresses are sharing bandwidth correctly, you can use this information for future provisioning as your network grows. 

Network traffic analysis tools work by streamlining, automating, and optimizing the processes necessary for comprehensive network traffic analysis.

It is possible to manually track, analyze, and troubleshoot traffic on smaller networks, but it’s not feasible for admins in charge of large enterprises. It’s just too labor-intensive and expensive.

This is where network traffic analysis tools come in. In general, these tools make it easier for users to locate and isolate the problem. Users can get a comprehensive view of their network, correlate flow data from many different sources, and help mitigate and prevent network slowdowns.

Network traffic analysis tools work by offering a range of capabilities, including the following:

• Automatically collects data: NetFlow and QoS data come from many disparate sources, but a network traffic analysis tool can collect it all easily. The best network traffic analysis tools can also scale as an enterprise’s network grows and accumulates more endpoints. 
• Displays data in a visual format: Intuitive charts and graphs make data easily digestible, and help users focus on the information they need the most.
• Alerts you to changes: A comprehensive alerting system ensures users can respond quickly to excessive bandwidth usage as soon as applications reach critical thresholds, thereby stopping performance issues before they escalate into full-fledged slowdowns.
• Enables custom reports: When a network traffic analysis tool generates custom reports, it also generates a repertoire of historical data about your network you can use to facilitate better policy management in the future.
• Correlates data from across the network: Cross-referencing different NetFlow data sources adds a further dimension to network traffic analysis and speeds up troubleshooting. If you need insight into CPU utilization across multiple apps, simply drag and drop them into the same timeline. 

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a powerful, scalable, and intelligent network traffic analysis tool designed to help users take control of their network and drill down on performance issues related to bandwidth usage. 

NTA is built to collect flow data for the most popular vendors, including NetFlow v5 and v9, Juniper J-Flow, and sFlow.

NTA not only identifies areas of peak usage within your network, but it also singles out the endpoints responsible for consuming the most bandwidth. This data is then converted into intuitive charts, graphs, and tables, so it’s easier to analyze the data and generate insights about it. This information is invaluable during a network slowdown.

NTA also makes passive network traffic analysis easier. This tool stores network traffic reports and other forms of historical data to be accessed at any time, meaning users have a built-in knowledge base for troubleshooting. Want to know the changes you made to your QoS policies are improving performance? Use NTA’s CBQoS policy optimization feature to look at your network’s pre- and post-policy traffic levels and determine if network performance has improved. 

Try SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer free for 30 days and unlock in-depth insights into network traffic analysis.