Bandwidth Usage Monitoring

Bandwidth usage monitor

Increasingly, organizations are dependent on their network to meet growing business demands. Applications that are bandwidth-heavy, such as cloud and e-learning applications, social networking sites, and video conferencing tools are on the rise. To ensure that business-critical activities are carried out without any hiccups, it is vital to implement a bandwidth usage monitor that can identify network bandwidth congestion proactively.

High bandwidth availability is synonymous with improved network performance. However, increasing bandwidth is not the optimum solution to reduce network performance issues. Many companies end up investing in expensive bandwidth upgrades with few positive improvements. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a bandwidth measuring tool to measure bandwidth usage and track bandwidth usage by various criteria, such as devices and applications. With ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, our highly efficient bandwidth monitoring software, you can efficiently gain crucial insights about your network's bandwidth, and measure bandwidth usage in your network to ensure optimized performance of your network resources.

What makes NetFlow Analyzer one of the best bandwidth usage monitors

Here are a few points that show how NetFlow Analyzer stands as the best bandwidth usage monitor.

  • A full-scale bandwidth monitoring tool
  • NetFlow Analyzer is an all-in-one bandwidth usage monitoring tool that supports extensive flow technologies like NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, AppFlow, IP FIX, etc. It also supports technologies like Cisco NBAR, AVC, WLC and WAAS monitoring.

  • Easy to use
  • The bandwidth usage monitoring tool offers a unified dashboard that provides the traffic data in the form of graphs and charts. You can view the top talkers of your infrastructure in a glance, and see which interfaces are utilizing your bandwidth, and how they are using it.

  • Advanced fault management
  • Get alerted for unexpected performance or bandwidth utilization changes with threshold-based alerts and notification templates. Without manual analysis and continuous tracking, your bandwidth management job is made effortless.

  • Add-ons
  • Apart from the comprehensive monitoring advantage it offers, as one of the best bandwidth usage monitoring software, NetFlow Analyzer also has Network Configuration Manager and OpUtils to help you sort the configuration and switch port management issues.

  • Faster troubleshooting with Forensics
  • With NetFlow Analyzer you can get to the root cause of a bandwidth bottleneck with network forensics' raw data information and troubleshoot issues faster. You get accurate insights about which source is causing the issue exactly with raw data

  • Capacity planning
  • NetFlow Analyzer makes scaling your network easier with capacity planning and network forecast reports. You can meet your network's operational capacity demands for the future with data about wasted bandwidth and optimization venues.

Measure bandwidth usage with NetFlow Analyzer

NetFlow Analyzer is a flow-based bandwidth usage monitoring tool that supports leading flow technologies like NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, J-Flow, and AppFlow. Flow monitoring is considered to be the most effective way to resolve complex network performance issues. With flow monitoring you can also:

  • Manage quality of service policies for business-critical applications.
  • Analyze traffic patterns to reveal potential bandwidth bottlenecks.
  • Proactively identify potentially malicious network behavior.
Bandwidth Usage Monitor - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

NetFlow Analyzer functions as an effective bandwidth usage monitor by monitoring and displaying usage based on devices, interfaces, applications and protocols in the network. Through dedicated snapshot views, users can gain an instant overview of the bandwidth usage by device, or based on interfaces and applications in your network. It also keeps you informed on the bandwidth utilization of the IN and OUT traffic and lets you view which network components are consuming the most bandwidth.

In addition to obtaining detailed graphs on the bandwidth consumption of various ports, protocols, IP addresses, and more, NetFlow Analyzer also alerts you to potential bandwidth bottlenecks with threshold-based alerts. You can also pull up bandwidth usage reports based on application, user, and conversations to discover proactive steps to take to help eliminate future network congestion problems. The granular details provided in the reports help determine the root cause of bandwidth consumption issues enabling you to drastically reduce mean time to resolve bandwidth issues, compared with other traditional bandwidth usage monitoring software.

In addition to its capabilities as an extensive bandwidth usage monitoring tool, NetFlow Analyzer also helps network admins manage the following aspects of their network:

Predict and plan your bandwidth usage with capacity planning

NetFlow Analyzer acts as a bandwidth usage monitor and provides you with a clear picture of your organization's bandwidth needs. Our user-friendly network utilization monitor helps you gain visibility over network usage. Based on the bandwidth usage trend, it delivers key capacity planning details that enable you to forecast and plan for application requirements in the future.

Monitor Bandwidth Usage - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

Capacity planning reports are generated based on the selected source and traffic type. With the help of accurate statistics, network administrators can learn more about the link usage over time, and the top applications used. Measure network usage with the application-wise breakdown lists the IN and OUT details of the top 10 applications cited in the report with the application type, amount of traffic, and traffic percentage. Constructive insights about your devices can be gained by enabling business hour filters, and excluding weekends in your reports. The generated reports can be exported in PDF and CSV format, and can also be scheduled to be sent to multiple users via email.

Monitor bandwidth usage to plan bandwidth needs

Bandwidth usage monitoring helps you make cost-efficient plans while expanding your network, or reorganizing the existing network infrastructure.

For example, an IT admin notices that the bandwidth utilization in one of the links in a network has been at peak for the past two months. On further analysis, using NetFlow Analyzer as the bandwidth usage monitoring solution, the IT admin finds that SMTP and SSH are consistently involved. The IT Manager reviews the bandwidth usage of the particular link and finds SMTP and SSH traffic have been consistently driven through this link. Viewing the overall application distribution, the IT Manager finds a link utilizing less bandwidth consumption. With real-time bandwidth usage monitoring, our bandwidth usage monitor helps IT admins safely re-route the SSH traffic using the under-utilized link, avoiding unnecessary link upgrade costs.

Know more on your network bandwidth usage with on-demand bills

With NetFlow Analyzer, it is now easy to monitor bandwidth usage on your network. With its billing module, our bandwidth usage monitor software provides real-time information on bandwidth consumption. It provides highly granular data on the bandwidth usage by device, source, and destination involved, and also on critical metrics such as traffic, applications used, traffic volume, and more.

Consider a company that has a dedicated internet link provided by their Internet Service Provider that charges them on a monthly basis for bandwidth usage. The company is monitoring this internet link through NetFlow Analyzer and would like to verify if they have been fairly charged. The Billing report option helps network administrators to keep this in check.

Network Bandwidth Usage Monitor - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

Users can create either speed or volume-based bill plans and associate them with an IP group or interface depending on the billing requirement. When creating a billing plan, users can set the cost for the assured base bandwidth and the incremental cost involved. The bills can be generated on a monthly or quarterly cycle. Users can also set threshold alerts based on usage. Once the bill plan is created, the bill will be generated and emailed on the set billing date.

With On-Demand billing, users can also generate the bill when required. This is useful when a plan is terminated before the end of the billing period or when you need an intermediate bill before the bill generation date. Creation of on-demand bill and viewing of previously generated bills can be done from the Reports tab under Billing in NetFlow Analyzer.

The billing solution provides ISPs the ability to bill customers with in-depth information and enables enterprise customers to have departmental charge back or cost allocation along with detailed bandwidth reports. With its simple design and user-friendly interface, our network usage software makes the creation and maintenance of bill plans an easy task.

Track and monitor bandwidth usage by scheduling reports

Measure Bandwidth Usage - Bandwidth Measuring Tool - ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

Apart from being a network usage monitor, NetFlow Analyzer, our network usage software also helps to generate and deliver reports at your mailbox with minimal human intervention. Users can schedule reports depending on the source and traffic type. These reports can be scheduled to be mailed on a daily, weekly or a monthly basis. With NetFlow Analyzer, automate your reports to be delivered where and when you want!