FlowViewer Sees What’s on Your Network

The need for network availability and performance at modern enterprises is critical. In today’s global e-commerce marketplace, networks are often the lifelines of businesses and must be consistently fast and available. But network managers with tight budgets often find meeting this expectation difficult.

Across industry, typical network management systems monitor gross interface bandwidth, which provides only limited insight into network utilization. Now, an innovative product gives users easy access to a powerful set of proven network management tools, providing unprecedented access to network information.

Developed by CSC, FlowViewer is available through CSC’s Enterprise Network Managed Services Center of Excellence. The technology breaks new ground in providing ways to analyze and track data through networks.

"FlowViewer takes the power of netflow data and flow-tools, the open-source netflow collector and analyzer, one important step further," says Joe Loiacono, CSC’s designer and developer of the technology. "For the first time, users have the ability to quickly filter, manipulate, graph, track and save the data, making netflow data analysis easy."

			Related Information: Watch a short video about CSC’s FlowViewer. Enterprise Network Managed Services Center of Excellence. Learn more about CSC’s Converged Networks offering. Read about the Award for Technical Excellence and the Leading Edge Forum. Contact us and let our experience help you produce results.

Looking at the network

For more than a year, network operators, engineers and Internet service providers have been taking advantage of this Web-based network management toolset that exploits the power of netflow data and open-source software to look into the actual usage and performance of their networks.

FlowViewer was developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to analyze their Earth Observing System network, which processes and distributes satellite data to climate and environmental scientists. The original application provided significant benefits and it is now offered to users around the world.

"FlowViewer has given us much needed insight into how our bandwidth is being utilized," says Karen Michael from the Earth Observing System Data and Information System. "We have found the tool invaluable for monitoring and troubleshooting our data flows."

Analyzing data in a new way

Data traveling across enterprise networks has traditionally been hard to analyze without significant investment. Network owners looking to obtain a comprehensive understanding of their network traffic lacked a low-cost, open-source solution that could present it easily, flexibly and thoroughly.

FlowViewer introduces several new capabilities to the network management space, improving the ability to manage a complex network by providing engineers a thorough understanding of network traffic. It also allows for long-term tracking of specified flows and statistical analysis of reported data.

The viewer supports network capacity planning, helps identify network design alternatives, minimizes chances of disruption caused by a modification, provides verification of network modifications, and supports the rollout of applications across the network.

Tracking data in the network

The toolset consists of three components that provide a comprehensive ability to understand and track the actual flow of data through the network. FlowViewer provides a textual report of network usage specifics. FlowGrapher gives a graphical depiction of network usage, and FlowTracker charts network usage and performance over time. Each of the tools includes an easy-to-use Web interface.

For security, FlowViewer offers the ability to complement existing forensics tools with added insight into per-host network activity. The tool enables network personnel to interface knowledgably with network users when discussing network usage, isolating problems or planning for a change of capacity. These tools also save engineers and operators many hours of preparation and analysis for network changes.

The viewer allows users to focus on a network usage of particular interest, analyze the data and verify or discredit certain network assumptions. For example, a network operator can verify whether certain routing changes intended to optimize traffic loads through the network have actually worked.

Innovating network management

The value of using netflow data from network routers and switches to manage that network is becoming more recognized. As an innovative addition to network management, FlowViewer unleashes the power of that data by providing a means of performing quick and varied analyses of it.

The toolset offers network engineers the ability to considerably diminish the time to perform troubleshooting. It also improves the comprehensiveness of network modification designs and yields greater confidence when planning network changes that could impact significant network-based applications.

"The new code is great," says Mark Boolootian, senior network engineer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It’s been quite useful for some problems we’re having at a remote site. FlowViewer has allowed me to make netflow data available to a much larger group, as the interface is easy for folks to deal with."

Available as public domain software, downloads from the FlowViewer Web site are increasing. Users range from universities and private commercial networks to international ISPs and telecom providers.

"The popularity of FlowViewer has been surprising," Loiacono adds. "From a few announcements on a couple of network related e-mail lists, international downloads are now averaging over 40 a week. Not ground-shaking, but more than I thought. It is proving useful."

FlowViewer received a 2007 Award for Technical Excellence, CSC’s top honor for innovation, sponsored by the Leading Edge Forum, which provides technology thought leadership for CSC.