[CentOS] netflow colelction and analysis

Ray Van Dolson rayvd at bludgeon.org
Sun Dec 6 23:51:50 UTC 2009


On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 at 06:23:01PM -0500, Jake wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Ray Van Dolson <rayvd at bludgeon.org> wrote:
> 
> > OP wants nfdump[1].  Great tool.  The web front-end is called nfsen and is
> > a separate package.
> >
> > Ray
> >
> > [1] http://nfdump.sourceforge.net/
> >
> 
> 
> Needs, but maybe not "wants." :-P
> 
> I used to be in love with ntop, but it has shown to be very unstable in the
> last few years (memory leaks, crashing, etc. for version in fedora-epel as
> well as latest stable and latest svn checkout..) Ntop is what you want (at
> least close to what you want the interface to look like) but i have yet to
> find any good netflow analyser that blows my skirt up after having sampled
> ntop (stability issues), solarwinds realtime netflow analyser (unknown
> reliability, plus only meant for live troubleshooting, not trending),
> solarwinds orion netflow module (too cumbersome to navigate to find simple
> answers like "what was on the wire during a certain time frame), and the
> cisco network analysis module for the 6500 (maybe the best i've seen even if
> its interface is ugly as hell.) If anyone has had a good experience with
> something user-friendly on the reporting side at least, I'd be thrilled to
> hear about it.
> 
> nfdump/nfsen does look like it could hold some value but i haven't evaluated
> it yet.

Both definitely fill their niche (actually I believe ntop can handle
netflow data), but nfdump is much more appropriate (IMO) for
colo/billing type situations.

Just saves data to simple files which can be parsed and easily imported
into a DB.  No need for a heavy-weight full-on packet capture system.

Ray



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