SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Reviews

We are using SolarWinds and have all the modules with us, including NetFlow and NPM. It is primarily used for Ampeller's Internet connectivity and device health monitoring. 

Additionally, we use it to generate monthly reports to present to management regarding bandwidth usage and clients. To justify the Bandwidth.

The bandwidth indicates the utilization of the devices; if any issue occurs, it triggers an alert for me.

I find this tool very helpful in identifying the top traffic paths from source to destination, and determining which routes are consuming the most resources. In this way, NetFlow provides more insights. For example, consider a scenario where I have a one-gig circuit connecting two locations.

This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path. This feature makes net flows very visible to me and to customers, showing what is happening at the backend. This is the main feedback I receive from customers about how NetFlow is being managed.

We use the network traffic analyzer for network bandwidth utilization and to understand where traffic is slow or unresponsive on the devices. It helps us understand how traffic is traversing the network.

It is also used in the manufacturing industry, but it's primarily for devices connected to the network, both in manufacturing and IT. It's not specific to any industry but rather used for the overall enterprise network.

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has impacted our troubleshooting processes. It really helps most of the time and gives a lot of information. 

However, there's a bit of a challenge in terms of navigation, and there are some limitations in the current Orion product. The new features in Orion and the high observability might have new features. 

We use the solution for capacity planning.

Consider a business that moves into online trading, creating a hybrid environment where the network is partly controlled by a cloud provider and partly by the company. In such a scenario, I could reduce network consumption within the organization by moving some applications to the cloud. By simulating this change, I can analyze the impact on network traffic. If the simulation shows a significant reduction in traffic, it may be more cost-effective to move applications to the cloud rather than reengineer the entire network.

We are a distributor for SolarWinds Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) and the majority of our customers are in the banking sector. For security reasons, we deploy the solution for our customers on-premises (it's not allowed to be cloud-based).

Our customers' standard use case for SolarWinds NTA is the monitoring of bandwidth and all the traffic flowing through their networks.

The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth.

Another solid feature of SolarWinds NTA is their reports. They offer real-time traffic reports that show updates every five to 10 seconds.

We use SolarWinds to get traffic visibility, job visibility, and traffic flows from all our outsources. We generate the traffic that we select within our network to show you.

We use it to generate the traffic that each location produces. We configure the flow on all the outputs in the branches and remote locations. The NetFlow will transport the traffic and send it to the SolarWinds server. This provides us with visibility into network activity, including the traffic generated, ports used, and communication partners, as well as whether we are exceeding our subscribed bandwidth. If we need more bandwidth, we allocate it accordingly.

The SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer will show us the traffic and let us know if we are maxed out. It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents. The node shows different colors, and the branch is up and running when the echo is green. If it is amber, it means that the network is not perfect. When it is red, the network is down, and we need to investigate and troubleshoot to know what the issue is. It also sends us emails when a branch is down, which we can configure to send us alerts. If there are JitsaaS, it will notify us. If one of the links is down, it will also notify us so we can fix the issue. It's very good.

There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic. They need to work on it more because when it generates traffic, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer doesn't show the source and destination IPs, which is essential to understand. It only shows the ports being used and what they are communicating with. SolarWinds does not have a monitoring solution for this, so they need to include a feature that can show where the IPs and systems are communicating, as third-party solutions can do.

There is a definition system that defines bad websites to your standards, and when your system communicates with that system, it flags it. However, SolarWinds cannot do that. It only shows you the telemetry, and there's no more visibility into what is happening outside the network. If you are connected to an IP outside your network, you won't know what it is.

It doesn't have any intelligence to add to the flow. It's just slow. It needs to be more of a robust tool that adds intelligence to the flow. When it shows you the flow, it should be able to tell you if the traffic is harmful to other sites.

We use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer primarily for monitoring our network traffic. We are exporting the flows from our network devices to SolarWinds, which then creates graphs showing the amount of traffic and the types of protocols in use, such as HTTP, TCP, and UDP.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer helps us identify issues when there is a link overload. It allows us to pinpoint which protocol is overloading the link.

We're mainly using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to analyze high usage in one of our interfaces in our MPLS data providers. When we have high usage, we check the reports on SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to find out what devices are being used more. We also use the solution to analyze specific connections to ensure access.

What my organization likes best about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its easy deployment. It's also well-integrated in terms of monitoring because my organization also uses a SolarWinds solution for monitoring. You can connect SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer directly to that monitoring tool to get information.

My organization also finds the default graphs that appear before the configuration in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer very useful.