Monitoring Bandwidth Usage: Solarwinds Simplified Guide

SolarWinds offers a range of tools to monitor bandwidth usage, including the NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) and the Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack Hybrid Cloud Observability. The NTA allows admins to collect, monitor, and analyze flow data to identify bandwidth bottlenecks and usage by application, protocol, and IP address group. The Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack provides complete network visibility with bandwidth analysis, allowing users to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues. SolarWinds also offers a free trial for users to experience the benefits of their bandwidth monitoring tools.

Identify bandwidth bottlenecks

SolarWinds offers a range of tools to help identify bandwidth bottlenecks. The SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) tool has capabilities that allow you to identify bandwidth bottlenecks within your network, and then pinpoint which endpoints or applications are consuming the most bandwidth. This tool can help you review historical data to identify habitual bottlenecks and adjust policies to better manage your network.

The SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is another tool that can help identify bandwidth bottlenecks. NTA enables admins to collect, monitor, and analyze flow data using Cisco NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, or NetStream. It provides better visibility into application and wireless traffic trends, bandwidth usage, and network performance. With NTA, you can also set up custom alerts to notify you of high bandwidth utilization, helping you quickly identify and address potential issues.

Additionally, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly known as Hybrid Cloud Observability) includes a traffic analysis dashboard that displays network traffic data comprehensively and customizably. This can help you gain a detailed view of all network traffic data, along with critical bandwidth information. The tool also integrates well with various systems and programs, allowing for in-depth network analysis monitoring of all network elements.

By leveraging these tools, you can proactively identify and address bandwidth bottlenecks to optimize your network performance and prevent slowdowns.

Monitor network traffic

Monitoring network traffic is essential to keeping your business running smoothly and efficiently. Bandwidth refers to a network's capacity to transfer data between devices or the internet within a given time frame. A network with higher bandwidth allows data to be transferred faster and enables more devices to connect simultaneously.

SolarWinds offers a range of tools to help monitor network traffic and optimize bandwidth usage:

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

NTA is a comprehensive network bandwidth monitor that allows you to view bandwidth usage by application, protocol, and IP address group. It supports various flow data protocols, including Cisco NetFlow, Juniper J-Flow, IPFIX, sFlow, and Huawei NetStream. NTA provides an intuitive dashboard for in-depth traffic analysis, helping you identify "top talkers" and optimize bandwidth policies.

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability)

This tool offers a comprehensive solution for monitoring bandwidth usage and network performance. It includes advanced features such as cloud infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, synthetic monitoring, and log monitoring. With its intuitive interface, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted helps detect, diagnose, and resolve network issues, improving overall network performance.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

NPM is another robust tool for monitoring network traffic and bandwidth usage. It offers features like NetPath and PerfStack for easy troubleshooting, Network Insights for deeper visibility, and intelligent maps for automated network discovery. NPM enables you to monitor all components of your network, ensuring optimal performance and maximum uptime.

Benefits of Monitoring Network Traffic:

• Identify Bandwidth Needs: Monitoring helps determine the bandwidth requirements of your network and plan for future expansions or upgrades.
• Boost Network Performance: By identifying "bandwidth hogs" and optimizing policies, you can enhance network speed and efficiency.
• Save Costs: Monitoring allows you to optimize bandwidth usage and avoid unnecessary expenses on additional bandwidth.
• Enhance Security: Monitoring network traffic helps detect suspicious activities and protect your network from potential data breaches.
• Troubleshoot Issues: With real-time insights, you can quickly identify and resolve network slowdowns or interruptions.

Bandwidth usage alerts

SolarWinds offers a range of tools to monitor bandwidth usage and set up alerts. The SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is one such tool that allows you to monitor bandwidth usage by application, protocol, and IP address group. With NTA, you can create custom bandwidth utilisation alerts to identify top talkers when they reach utilisation thresholds. This can help you determine if top consumers of interface bandwidth are using resources for legitimate business purposes, and whether you need to add capacity to support them or block them to prevent potential slowdowns and outages.

NTA also allows you to collect, process, and display Class-Based Quality of Service (CBQoS) data, which helps ensure that mission-critical traffic receives the highest priority in the event of congestion and optimises bandwidth use on your network. You can also use NTA to turn usage data into network bandwidth reports, allowing you to view both current and historical data to understand traffic patterns.

The SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability tool also includes bandwidth monitoring and network traffic analysis features. This tool provides AIOps-powered anomaly-based alerts that integrate with Hybrid Cloud Observability alerting to reduce alert noise and improve conventional alerts. With this tool, you can monitor bandwidth use by application, protocol, and IP address group, and view both IPv4 and IPv6 flow records. You can also set up application traffic alerting to be notified of unusual changes in application traffic.

The Network Performance Monitor (NPM) also allows you to create alerts for bandwidth utilisation for specific interfaces. You can set up custom bandwidth per interface and include transmit and receive percent variables in the alert.

Bandwidth usage reports

The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer allows admins to collect, monitor, and analyze flow data from various sources, including Cisco NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, and NetStream. It provides visibility into application and wireless traffic trends, bandwidth usage, and network performance. The tool enables users to create bandwidth reports based on current network usage, helping identify which users, applications, and protocols are consuming the most bandwidth. These reports can be customized and scheduled for automatic generation and delivery.

The Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack, included in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, offers complete network visibility with bandwidth analysis. It helps detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues by tracking response time, availability, and uptime of routers, switches, and other SNMP-enabled devices. This solution also includes application traffic alerting, which notifies users of unusual changes in application traffic.

SolarWinds' bandwidth monitoring solutions provide valuable insights for businesses to optimize their network performance, identify bandwidth bottlenecks, and ensure efficient usage. By generating bandwidth usage reports, organizations can make informed decisions to improve their network infrastructure and overall productivity.

Monitor bandwidth by application

SolarWinds offers a few different tools to monitor bandwidth by application. One such tool is the SolarWinds® NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA), which is designed to provide network utilization and bandwidth monitoring for networks of all sizes. The NTA allows admins to collect, monitor, and analyze flow data using Cisco NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, or NetStream. It also provides better visibility into application and wireless traffic trends, bandwidth usage, and network performance through the use of NBAR2 insights and WLC monitoring. With the NTA, you can also set up alerts to be notified when a particular application is consuming too much bandwidth.

Another tool offered by SolarWinds is the Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack, which is included in the SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. This tool provides complete network visibility with bandwidth analysis and more. It helps detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues, including tracking the response time, availability, and uptime of routers, switches, and other SNMP-enabled devices. The Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack also includes application traffic alerting, which will notify you if application traffic suddenly increases, decreases, or disappears completely.

In addition to these tools, SolarWinds also offers a Network Bandwidth Monitor, which provides real-time status updates on network traffic and bandwidth utilization levels. This tool can help identify "top talkers", or applications using the most bandwidth, and address any issues causing high traffic levels.

Frequently asked questions