Netflow Collecting and Analysis is a great way to find out what's going on in your network and see who all the bandwidth hogs are within your organization.
Capturing Flow packets and studying them will help you find out where all your bandwidth is getting allocated and how to further stop abuse in your organization. To get a better understanding of What Netflow is, have a look at in-depth tutorial and definition here.
We've seen many instances when the internet has been crippled by someone streaming YouTube or worse, downloading Torrents illegally within the LAN environment. Catching these bandwidth hogs using one of the mentioned software packages below will help you clamp down your network and get rid of unwanted bandwidth usage.
It will also help you save money in the long run which is another added benefit. If you are looking for a more generic version, checkout our post here where we compiled a list of generic Bandwidth monitor tools and software.
Before you can analyze any sort of data, you have to capture it. By default, your networking gear may not be capturing this information, but it should be fairly easy to turn the feature on.
Here are instructions to enable tracking on Cisco and Juniper equipment. Check with your own manufacturer for similar instructions, or even a tech community like SpiceWorks.
Some of the tools we’ll discuss also have guides included to get you started.
Here's the Best NetFlow Analysis & Collection Tools & Software of 2024:
Our methodology for selecting Netflow analyzers and Collectors
We reviewed the network monitoring tools and software market and analyzed the options based on the following criteria:
- Support for various protocols and environments
- Support for alerting and reports
- A facility to analyze network performance over time
- Graphical interpretation of data, such as charts and graphs
- A free trial period, a demo, or a money-back guarantee for no-risk assessment
- A good price that reflects value for money when compared to the functions offered
All of the tools below are free, although usually at the expense of some of the more advanced features. If you only need to find your bandwidth hogs, the free versions should be just fine. If you’re looking to lock down every single packet or find packet loss in your network, you’ll want to consider purchasing the full versions for that kind of Bandwidth monitoring and control.
Now let's talk about each option!
1. Paessler PRTG – FREE TRIAL
Paessler PRTG is a full-service monitoring solution, and their service is 100% free forever. PRTG offers users 100 free “sensors” and has been noted to be a suitable alternative to many open-source packages. A sensor can be any part of your network, whether it’s bandwidth analysis on a switch or server, an up-time monitor, CPU and Processor usage, etc.
Pros:
- Designed to be an infrastructure monitoring tool that supports multiple sensors types such as NetFlow, sFlow, and J-Flow
- Offers additional monitoring on the same platform, supporting infrastructure, network, and application performance monitoring
- Captures packet headers only, helps speed up analysis and keep storage costs down for long-term collection
- Uses simple yet intuitive graphing for traffic visualization
Cons:
- Very detailed platform, takes time to learn and fully utilize all of the features available
If you outgrow its Free Features & Capabilities, you need only buy more sensors at a reasonable rate – PRTG is a Trusted Name in Network monitoring and they've come to show their capabilities in many forms, not just in the Netflow Analyzer realm.
Price & Trial: You can start with a 30-day free trial.
Download: https://www.paessler.com/download/prtg-download
Related post: See our analysis between PRTG vs Nagios for Network Monitoring
2. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer – FREE TRIAL
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer makes it easy to view and understand your traffic at a glance. The clean interface and helpful graphs give you all the information you need right away, and the automatic recognition of suspicious activity is very helpful.
Pros:
- Supports multiple protocols like NetFlow, great for monitoring Cisco equipment
- Both tools work well alongside each other to help view traffic patterns and bandwidth usage
- Easy to use interface automatically highlights bandwidth hogs and other network traffic outliers
- Scale well, designed for large enterprise networks
- Can view traffic on a per-hop basis, allowing for granular traffic analysis
Cons:
- Built for enterprise use, not designed for small home networks
The free edition will only monitor two interfaces at once.
Price & Trial: You can start with a 30-day free trial.
Download: https://www.manageengine.com/products/netflow/
3. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
SolarWinds makes great tools for managing your entire network, from servers to VMs to network traffic. The full Suite allows you to keep tabs on all your devices wherever they may be and send alerts when something goes awry.
The SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is only a part of that larger suite, but it will analyze the network traffic in real-time and show you any issues it finds. The NTA Suite from SolarWinds has full functionality to analyze other flow protocols, including sFlow, J-FLow, ipfix and Netstream as well.
It offers a wide variety of customization and other standard features out of the box that many other software platforms don't come with.
Pros:
- Supports multiple protocols like NetFlow, great for monitoring Cisco equipment
- Both tools work well alongside each other to help view traffic patterns and bandwidth usage
- Easy to use interface automatically highlights bandwidth hogs and other network traffic outliers
- Scales well, designed for large enterprise networks
- Can view traffic on a per-hop basis, allowing for granular traffic analysis
Cons:
- Built for enterprise use, not designed for small home networks
We Recommend you Download it and try it for FREE to familiarize yourself better with its capabilities!
Price & Trial: To determine your network requirements, start off with this 30-day free trial.
4. Plixer NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
Plixer Scrutinizer will show you a comprehensive snapshot of your network as it currently exists, but the free version only shows the last five hours’ worth of data, making long-term analysis impossible without purchasing the full version. Still, the amount of data available is pretty impressive and it’s presented in such a way that it’s not difficult to pick apart and understand what’s happening.
For a Quick and Dirty analysis of Flow data, this might be a good tool for you to utilize – but if your looking for a longer term solution, you will need to purchase a license!
Pros:
- Offers multiple deployment options
- Designed to support large enterprise networks
- Offers additional security-related traffic analysis features
Cons:
- Must reach out to sales for pricing
- Steeper learning curve than similar tools on the market
Download: https://www.plixer.com/products/scrutinizer/
5. Wireshark
Perhaps you’re simply not interested in all of those fancy bar graphs and pie charts. Maybe you just want to dig right into the raw data and pick it apart that way.
If that’s what you need to accomplish, there’s no better tool than Wireshark. The learning curve is extremely steep, but once you know what you’re doing, Wireshark will give you as much information as you can handle, and then some.
The hardest part about Wireshark is actually filtering out all the extraneous data that you don’t need in order to make sense of what’s left. Lucky for many of us, Solarwinds has a Response time Viewer for Wireshark that makes sorting and searching for events much easier, you can see the full review here.
Pros:
- One of the most popular sniffer tools, with a massive community behind it
- Open source project that adds new features and plugins
- Supports packet collection and analysis in the same program
Cons:
- Has a steep learning curve, designed for network professionals
- Filtering can take time to learn, collects everything by default which can be overwhelming on large networks
If you don't mind excessive amounts of data at your fingers, then there’s nothing quite like Wireshark!
Download: https://www.wireshark.org/#download
6. NetVizura
NetVizura NetFlow Analyzer is a solution for better understanding of bandwidth consumption, traffic trends, applications, hosts and traffic patterns, by visualizing the traffic by networking devices, interface ports and sub networks, traffic segments and clients.
NetVizura uses primarily NetFlow but has functionality for IPfix, NSEL, sFlow and compatible flow protocols to help with analysis of Bandwith usage, packet sniffing and reporting features.
Enabling networks and applications optimization, planning network expansion, and saving time needed for troubleshooting and diagnostics and improving security leads to considerably lowering company operational costs and increasing network team productivity.
The main use cases for NetVizura NetFlow Analyzer are:
- Bandwidth Consumption Analysis – if there are interfaces that are overloaded and over-conjested, you can dive into reasons why this happened
- Specific (Custom) Traffic Monitoring – if there are some vital segments of your traffic (such as servers, services, sites or clients) that you would like to monitor and that are not visible to standard NMS solutions
- End User Monitoring – quickly discover who is behind IP, see how employees are using your network for better optimization and planning, if there is any misuse or abuse of network resources
- Security Incidents Alarming & Diagnostics – If there are some anomalies in your traffic you can detect them fast and easy (such as DDoS, Data leak, Port scan, Blackoling review, Employee abuse), and find out the causes for these anomalies
Pros:
- Can process high volumes of logs, making it a solid option for larger companies
- Robust search filters help sort by severity, application, or timeframe
Cons:
- No month-to-month pricing options
Download: https://www.netvizura.com/netflow-analyzer
7. Netflow Auditor
Netflow Auditor by IdeaData is a great tool for visualizing Flow data in Real-time and understanding the type of traffic and bandwidth usage in your network. This tool has a 30 Day free Trial to get a feel of how it works and installed in your network.
Some Notable features of this tool include:
- Monitoring without the need for probes using Netflow versions 1, 5, 7 and 9, as well as IPFIX.
- View Bandwidth utilization statistics, including Current, Avg and Peak Utilization periods and times.
- View Historical Usage reports by IP Address, Protocol, Application, QoS and many other customizable fields and parameters.
- Filter Data into Easy-to-Read and Digest Reports for End users.
- and many more features
You can see all their Features and Capabilities on their Details page here!
Pros:
- Offers a suite of networking and NetFlow services
- Supports IPFIX, sFlow, J-Flow, and more
- Cross-platform – available for both Windows and Linux
- Great interface and reporting capabilities
Cons:
- Can take time to fully explore all aspects of the platform
Download: http://offer.netflowauditor.com/index.php/go/free-trial/
Final Words
We hope this Article has at least given you a starting point for where to find a good Netflow collector and Analyzer for dissecting Flow data from your Network device.
Many, if not all of these software and tools above, have a Free version to use for either a limited amount of days/time or Sensors.
We suggest your download a couple of the Netflow analyzers and Collectors from above to get a feel of the options and capabilities they can offer you before making a concrete decisions!
Happy monitoring!
Netflow Analyzer and Collectors for Windows FAQs
What is a Netflow analyzer?
A Netflow analyzer is a tool that can analyze and report on network traffic flows, providing insights into traffic patterns and usage.
What is a Netflow collector?
A Netflow collector is a tool that can collect and store Netflow data for later analysis.
What are some common Netflow analyzer and collector tools?
Common Netflow analyzer and collector tools include SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, Plixer Scrutinizer, and Cisco NetFlow Collector.
What are some common challenges associated with using Netflow analyzers and collectors?
Common challenges associated with using Netflow analyzers and collectors can include managing large volumes of data, ensuring compatibility with existing infrastructure, and interpreting data to make meaningful decisions.
