Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer

Features & Benefits

IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer, a flow-based network traffic performance analysis system, provides its users detailed visibility on the composition of network traffic. With the knowledge of the traffic patterns within their networks, network operators can more effectively plan for expanding capacity as well as troubleshoot performance problems.Network operators will use IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer V4.1 to track which applications are consuming more bandwidth. It enables them to anticipate and report potential problems to network analysts and planners.
Operators can use IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer to isolate the source of problems with the delivery of services. Should an application over utilize bandwidth, it will impact other applications, some of which may be mission critical. Quickly isolating and identifying the problem sources aids efforts to enhance customer satisfaction. Network planners use IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer to observe the traffic patterns over time. Visibility of the traffic per application, per quality of service (QoS), and per network segments enables planners to strategically plan expansions or reconfigurations, rather than simply throwing bandwidth at any congestion problems. Finally, business planners could use reports from IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer to understand what applications are most popular and growing. This could effect how a service provider chooses to package services.
Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer supports the collection and analysis of Cisco NetFlow or Internet Protocol Flow Information eXchange (IPFIX) data records to generate a wide variety of reports showing the traffic patterns at different locations in the network. IBM Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer is capable of computing and presenting aggregate values in near real-time and at fine grained or detailed periods.

Reporting
Traffic usage reports are provided for bit, packet and flow rates in interactive tables, pie charts and graphs. The reports contain information about single or combinations of the following traffic aspects:

• Applications (e.g., Mail, HTTP, Backup, Printer, Lotus Notes).
• Hosts and servers.
• Domains defined by lists of subnets, autonomous systems or flow filters.
• Individual end-to-end flows.
• Traffic types (i.e., unicast, broadcast, multicast, IPv4/IPv6, ICMP).
• Service types (i.e., IETF DiffServ).
• Protocols (e.g., TCP, UDP, ICMP).
• TCP/UDP ports and services (e.g., dfs, dns, ssh, telnet, pop3, smtp).
• Flow-information exporters and interfaces

Interoperability

Flow-based Network Profiling System offers an application programming interface (API) to its backend. All configuration, control and database access functions are supported by the API. The API is also used for scripted output (e.g., CSV and PDF). customArray grouping in aggregation database (ADB) is efficient for obtaining a sorted view of related parameters. This feature is of great importance for efficiently displaying sorted lists of top protocols, top hosts, top flows, etc. ADB supports period durations of hour, day, week, month quarter and year. The resolution of every period can be adjusted.
Advanced users can write scripts to export periodically into a desired output format. The
scripting language can, furthermore, be used for event notification. Events can be gnaled, for instance, as syslogmessages.

Flow-based Network Profiling System is integrated with IBM Tivoli Netcool/Proviso.

High Performance and Scalability
Flow-based Network Profiling System is designed for high performance. The system makes use of parallelism on multi-core architectures and uses a fast in-memory aggregation database (ADB). A single installation can accommodate flow-information records exported from many routers, switches and interfaces. On a typical dual-core server configuration, a processing speed of 50K flows per second can be achieved. Higher flow rates require more resources or a distributed setup.

User Interface
The user interface of Flow-based Network Profiling System is web-based (over Secure SocketLayer). Built-in user management provides user roles with password-protected access via local or LDAP authentication.

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