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Traffic Analysis How ToWebinar Series

Traffic Analysis for Flow and Non Flow-Enabled Networks:

January 26, 2010

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Agenda:

Today’s Presenters:– Kevin Gillis, VP Product Management, Network Management– Jason Williams, Product Manager & The WhatsUp Guru

Agenda:– The Need for Traffic Analysis– Session 1,2 and 3 Recap– Flow Publisher Overview– “Mixed Network”– Technical Demonstration– Q&A – Next Steps

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The Need for Traffic Analysis

• My network is slow and I do not know why…– Existing tools don’t give me any or enough visibility…

• Into user and application network bandwidth utilization• Into network performance issues• Into locating and troubleshooting issues• Into applications and their effect on the network• Into security breaches and unauthorized usage

Tools are either too expensive or complex to deploy

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The Need for Traffic Analysis• My network is slow and my network does not know why…

– Existing hardware does not give me any or enough visibility…• My network hardware is not NetFlow, sFlow or J-Flow capable• My network hardware is not NetFlow, sFlow or J-Flow enabled• My network hardware is flow capable but it’s too expensive enable by taking

down the network, adding hardware and upgrading the IOS • The segment of my network is not 100% flow enabled

• Current solutions– Require expertise in packet level and protocol level analysis– Require device or network upgrades/downtime– Require investment in appliances or probes

Flow enabled hardware is either too expensive or complex to deploy

Recap of Traffic Analysis Series Session 1:

Application and User Traffic Analysis

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Application and User Traffic Analysis

• Rapid isolation of server versus network based issues• Insight into reasons for application traffic

– Traffic loads– Users– Peak usage timeframes

• Establish a performance baseline• Locate under and over subscribed applications and servers

– Standalone servers– Virtualized servers

• Traffic to individual virtual machines (VMs)

Why is server based traffic analysis important?

Creates opportunity to optimize server infrastructures based upon actual user and application utilization data.

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Server Traffic Analysis Deployment

• Flow Publisher Server Agent– Windows Server

• 32 & 64 bit: Standard and Enterprise Server 2008 and Standard & Enterprise Server 2003 SP2

• Non-virtualized and virtualized servers

• Network interface

– Runs as a Windows service• Small resource footprint

Application and user traffic analysis at the source

Recap of Traffic Analysis Series Session 2:

Traffic Analysis for Non Flow-Enabled Networks: “TAP”ing

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TAPing…What’s a TAP and how does it work?

– TAP stands for Test Access Point.– A network tap is a fully passive device.– Electrically or optically packets are copied onto the tap ports.

Considerations– Fidelity: You get 100% guaranteed view of network traffic even with larger deployments of 10

Gigabit+. They are completely passive and do not cause any distortion even on FDX and full bandwidth networks.

– Security: Taps are not addressable network devices & therefore cannot be hacked– Ease of Use: Taps have no setups or command line issues so getting all the data is assured

and saves users time. They are also fault tolerant.

Summary:– Taps offers high integrity and fidelity with 100% packet capturing; no packet or frame

alterations.– As a fully passive device, it does not impact the performance or scalability of the switch or

router unit.– Requires additional hardware to be purchased and installed potentially leading to downtime.

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Internet

Firewall

This Switch does not support port mirroring or SPAN

Netflow Datagram

Example TAP Deployment

Recap of Session 3: Mirroring and SPANing

SPANing by any other name…What’s a SPAN and how does it work?

– Port Mirroring, Port Monitoring, Switched Port Analyzer or SPAN (Cisco world), or Roving Analysis Port (RAP-3COM)

– A port mirror is active packet duplication• The network device physically has the duty of copying packets onto a mirror port. • This device has to carry on this task by using some resources (e.g. CPU) and that both traffic directions will be

copied into the same port. – The network device must support port mirroring

Considerations– Packet Loss: Full duplex links can’t exceed the network speed before packet loss occurs. This

because there’s physically no space to copy packets. • LAN switches are designed to groom data (change timing, add delay), extract bad frames and ignore all layer 1 & 2

information. • VLAN tags are not normally passed which can lead to false issues detected and difficulty in finding VLAN issues.• Frame interaction timing is changed, corrupt packets and/or small packets are dropped.

– Time Consuming and Potentially Political:• Proper spanning requires that a network engineer configure the switches properly • You must ensure that no packet flow is mirrored more than once. • Configurations can become a political issue between IT team, the security team and the compliance team

Summary:– Port mirroring may not require any new hardware as it can be performed by many switches (but not

all) – Fidelity and integrity must be considered. Packet loss can happen for a variety of reasons. – Scalability is a real concern: With Gigabit and 10 Gigabit technologies (and Full Duplexing doubling

the base bandwidth), switches/routers can’t both mirror and handle primary job of switching and routing.

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Flow Publisher 1.0 Overview

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Flow Publisher v1.0 Summary

• Flow data generated from raw network traffic– Convert raw traffic into NetFlow v1, v5 and v9 compliant flow records

• Full range of NetFlow information• Not sampled flow data

• Pinpoint or broad traffic analysis– Windows servers and any applications (e.g. Oracle, SAP, Exchange)– Passive using TAPs (Test Access Point)– Active packet duplication through virtually any network device

supporting port mirroring

• High impact: non-invasive and inexpensive to maintain– Leverages existing network infrastructure– No device hardware or software upgrades required– Does not require network or device downtime

Enables flow analysis for non-flow capable devices

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Flow Publisher v1.0 Features

• Two Components1. Agent Manager Interface

• Configure and manage a single or multiple agents

2. Flow Publisher Agent• Processes raw traffic data• Standalone installation

» Windows computer

– TAP or mirrored interfaces

– Accepts raw traffic from up to 4 individual interfaces

• Hosted installation– Directly on Windows Servers

» Application monitoring

» User monitoring

» VMware Virtualized Systems

Software only solution

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1.

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Flow Publisher v1.0 Features cont’d

• Integrates with v14.x of WhatsUp Gold and v2.0 of Flow Monitor for:

– Real-time traffic monitoring and analysis

– Threshold alerting

– 40+ reports (web and mobile)

• Maps MAC addresses to reported interfaces • Jumbo and fragmented packet support• Configurable logging

– 3 levels of detail

• 2 levels of traffic capture– Normal

– Promiscuous

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Flow Publisher v1.0 Features cont’d

Provides the same information into Flow Monitor for analysis and reporting as other NetFlow sources. This includes the following:

1. Protocol 2. Application (port number) 3. Conversations 4. Sender host 5. Receiver host 6. Sender domain 7. Receiver domain 8. Sender top level domain (TLD) 9. Receiver TLD 10. Top sender country 11. Top receiver country 12. Type of service (ToS) 13. Top Senders with the Most Conversation Partners14. Top Senders with the Most Failed Connections15. ICMP Types16. Top Receivers with the Most Conversation Partners17. Top Receivers with the Most Failed Connections18. Packet Size Distribution

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Agent & Collector High-level InteractionServer with Flow

Publisher agent Installed

TAP

Switch

Switch forwards mirrored traffic to Flow Publisher agent

Agent forwards NetFlow records to Flow Monitor collector

TAP forwardsbi-directional traffic to Flow Publisher agent

Server based agent forwards NetFlow records to Flow Monitor collector

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Flow Publisher agent on PC

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WhatsUp Gold and Flow Monitor

collector

Three flexible deployment models provide unlimited choices

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Flow and Non Flow-Enabled Flow Monitoring

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A Flow is a Flow is a Flow…

Application and user traffic analysis at the source

Application TrafficWindows service, small resource footprint, normal & promiscuous mode

Passive TapHardware solution, <$1k, 100% capture, minimal admin and skills

SPAN/MirroringHardware solution, Free or low costs, drops packets, remote admin, specialized skills

SummaryApplication TAP SPAN/Mirror

Active device Passive device Active device

No Cost Moderate Cost No to low cost

Normal or Promiscuous mode

100% capture including errors

Drops physical layer, bad and/or small frames

No packet loss Full visibility into FD networks

Drops packets on busy FD Networks

N/A Can not monitor intra-switch traffic

Can monitor intra-switch traffic

Does not alter timing Does not alter timing Can change timing of frame interaction

Local or Remote config Local configuration Remote Configuration

Minimal config skills Minimal config skills High config skills

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Flow and Non Flow-Enabled Flow MonitoringTechnical Demonstration

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Generate flow based traffic without expensive software, hardware, operating system upgrades or sacrificing down-time.

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Q & APlease submit your questions

via the Q&A feature in the lower right corner

Additional Questions?

Jason Williams – guru@ipswitch.comKevin Gillis – k@ipswitch.com

orhttp://whatsupgold.com/community – then go to Forums

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Questions from customers…• Anthony F

– Q: Did I hear and see correctly...This application will flow monitoring of non-flow enabled devices?  Such as some of Cisco's smaller catalysts switches.

– A: That is correct.  Our other sessions will go into details on how to set that up.• Michael M

– Q: Can you set thresholds per TOS field per device? For example can I set up a threshold that will alarm me if EXP traffic exceeds 30% on any device?

– A: Yes, you should be able by creating a Flow Monitor Custom Threshold.• Scot L

– Q: How can unclassified traffic be further defined?– A: By configuring or monitoring the ports.

• Temple M– Q: In a case where you are spanning or mirroring a core switch to the agent, which in turn reports to the Whatsup box, does that

create an intense increase in traffic or storage to the Whatup system?– A: It may, but remember that Flows contains only headers and there are several options to keep the volume under control.

• Kai M– Q: But a switch with port mirroring is as good as a tap right?– A: Yes, but mirroring has a small limitation in performance, when both directions are used at the same time at higher level. It

may drop some packets.• Ming W

– Q: Is the Flow Monitor licensed based on the number of WUG devices licensing?– A: The Flow Monitor license is based on the number of devices sending netflow data, totally independent of the WhatsUp

devices.

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Next Steps…

Find out more about Flow Publisher v1.0http://www.whatsupgold.com/whatsnew

Try - free 30 day evaluationhttp://www.whatsupgold.com/download

Buy – (3) ways to purchase www.whatsupgold.com/buy

1. WhatsUp Gold Representative2. An Ipswitch Reseller Partner of your choice3. Online via our ecommerce shop

Increased visibility into single segment, multi-segment, application and user traffic on your network!

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Flip over this…1 randomly selected attendee will receive a Flip Mino camcorder

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Thank you!