PRTG Traffic Grapher

Monitoring Helps You To Optimize Your Network
With PRTG Traffic Grapher you will receive bandwidth and network usage data that helps to optimize the efficiency of your network. Understanding bandwidth and resource consumption is the key to better network management:

• Avoid bandwidth and server performance bottlenecks
• Find out what applications or what servers use up your bandwidth
• Deliver better quality of service to your users by being proactive
• Reduce costs by buying bandwidth and hardware according to actual load

See How Bandwidth Usage Monitoring Works
PRTG Traffic Grapher is running on a Windows machine in your network for 24 hours every day and constantly records the network usage parameters. The recorded data is stored in an internal database for later reference. Using an easy to use Windows interface you can configure the monitored sensors as well as create usage reports. For remote access PRTG Traffic Grapher comes with a built-in web server to provide access to graphs and tables. All common methods for network usage data acquisition are supported:

• SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol is the basic method of gathering bandwidth and network usage data. It can be used to monitor bandwidth usage of routers and switches port-by-port as well as device readings like memory, CPU load etc. Go to animation....
• Packet Sniffing: With its built-in capability for Packet Sniffing PRTG can inspect all network data packets travelling in your LAN or WLAN to calculate the bandwidth usage. Go to animation....
• NetFlow: The NetFlow protocol is supported by most Cisco routers to measure bandwidth usage. Although being the most complex type to set up it is also the most powerful method suitable for high traffic networks. Go to animation....

Base Features

• Reliable network monitoring used by more than 100.000 users every day
  Supports data acquisition via SNMP, packet sniffing (for LANs and WLANs) or Netflow protocol
• Classifies network traffic by IP address, protocol and other parameters
  Works with most switches, routers, firewalls, and other network devices
• Easy installation with a few clicks on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista
  Monitoring engine is capable of monitoring up to several thousand sensors

Supported Data Acquisition Methods

Depending on your infrastructure you can choose between four different network monitoring methods supported by our bandwidth meter software:

• SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol is the basic method of gathering bandwidth and network usage data. It can be used to monitor bandwidth usage of routers and switches port-by-port as well as device readings like memory, CPU load etc. Supports SNMP Version 1, 2c and 3. More details...
• LAN Packet Sniffing: The Packet Sniffer inspects all network data packets passing the system's network card and is able to classify network traffic by IP address, protocol and other parameters
• WLAN Packet Sniffing: Using a specialized WLAN USB dongle hardware (available from the manufacturer's website cacetech.com) PRTG is able to inspect all network data packets travelling in your WLAN network in order to classify network traffic by IP address, protocol and other parameters
• Netflow: The Netflow protocol is supported by most Cisco routers to measure bandwidth usage. Although being the most complex type to set up it is also the most powerful method suitable for high traffic networks and can also classify network traffic by IP address, protocol and other parameters.
• Latency: Monitoring performance of a data line or a device by measuring PING times
• Note: Only with packet sniffer and netflow based monitoring it is possible to measure the traffic by IP address, and/or protocol. SNMP based traffic measurement is port-based only.

Windows and Web Based User Interface

• Network and bandwidth monitoring data can be accessed via a Windows GUI and a web based front end
• Intuitive Windows user interface for data retrieval and configuration
• Integrated web server for remote access (no external web server necessary)
• Results are shown in various graphs and tables
  • live data for last 5-60 minutes
  • 1-60 minute averages for up to 48h
  • hourly averages for up to 60 days
  • daily averages for up to 365 days
  • Top Talkers, Top Protocols, Top Connections
• Graphs are always generated on-the-fly for live reporting

Monitoring Database

• Internal database for fast and efficient storage of historic data
• Optional export of monitoring results into CSV files for custom reporting
• Database offers optional zipped backup and purging of old data

Internal Web Server

• Easy to use navigation allows to drill into the live monitoring results
• Fully "skinable" web interface using HTML templates (several default skins included)
• Web server supports public (anyone can view the data) as well as authenticated access (username/password necessary) for multiple users

Reports

• Configurable reports (graphs and data tables) in HTML, Excel, TIF, RTF, or PDF format
• Daily, monthly, and yearly reports can be exported via email or saved to file
• x% percentile calculation for any percentile value, any interval, and any time frame
• Includes a billing system for bandwidth based billing

Notifications

• For each sensor individual email notifications can be configured that notify about
  • Errors (e.g. device is not reachable)
  • Reaching traffic limits (e.g. more than x MB transferred per day or month)
  • Reaching traffic or usage thresholds (e.g. more than 700kbit bandwidth for more than one hour) 
     

SNMP Related Features

PRTG collects the required data and information from the SNMP capable devices (i.e. any given OID Object ID). SNMP Versions 1 (base standard), 2C (64 bit counters) and 3 (authentication and encryption) are supported as well as 32-bit and 64-bit counters. The SNMP sensors can be set up while applying four different procedures.

1. Monitoring of Standard Traffic Data
   PRTG automatically searches for all interfaces of a device that shed light on inbound and outbound bandwidths, Unicast/Non-Unicast packages, or failures. The system subsequently provides a list with the identified ports by means of which the desired sensors can be easily set up via mouse-click.
2. SNMP Helper for Monitoring Windows Data
   Windows via SNMP delivers a multitude of monitoring data. By means of Paessler SNMP Helper corresponding lists for easy access to several thousand performance counters on Windows based machines can be generated and based on them the sensors for monitoring the specific systems parameters can be set up with only one single click.
3. Convenient Monitoring of Proprietary Data
   Manufacturers of SNMP capable devices usually deliver access information (OIDs) to the data required for monitoring in the form of so-called MIB files. For this purpose, Paessler has developed the MIB Importer that comfortably and easily converts these files into so-called "OID-libraries“ for PRTG. Since MIB files are very often faultily implemented the MIB Importer has been designed to be even more fault tolerant in the current version in order to process even more MIB files. Sensors interesting to the administrator can be selected by mouse click from the created OID Libraries. The MIB Importer can be downloaded free of charge.
   Additionally, a multitude of preconfigured OID libraries are already included in the delivery of PRTG (for example for Cisco routers, Dell servers, CPU loads, disk usages, printer page counts, environmental monitoring, and many more).
4. Direct Creation of a Sensor in Case of Known OID
   If  a particular address (OID) of SNMP data is known, this can be manually entered in PRTG thus creating a sensor.

Other System Features

• Runs as an "nt service" on Windows 2000/XP/2003 to ensure that monitoring runs all the time (you do not have to be logged into your machine to keep monitoring running)
• Extensive filtering can be applied for Netflow and Packet Sniffing based monitoring
• Sensors can be "tagged" for easy navigation in long sensor lists
• Easy setup of the same set of sensors for several devices usind Device Templates
• Monitoring and notifications can be paused using user defined schedules

How does PRTG Traffic Grapher work?
For network usage and bandwidth monitoring PRTG Traffic Grapher supports three methods to acquire the data: It can log the amount of data flowing in and out of SNMP enabled network components using the "Internet MIB-2" standard
It can inspect all data packets passing a computer's network card ("packet sniffing")
It can use bandwidth usage data sent by Cisco routers using the Netflow protocol (V5)

Can I monitor the bandwidth usage of different protocols?
A: Yes, using the Packet Sniffer or Netflow based monitoring you can differentiate the traffic by protocol, IP addresses and MAC addresses.

Can I monitor the traffic of several websites running on one machine?
Yes, using the Packet Sniffer or Netflow based monitoring you can differentiate the traffic by protocol, IP addresses and MAC addresses. But: If several websites share one common IP address PRTG is not able to classify the bandwidth usage between them.

Can I monitor the traffic of several computers using one leased line?
Yes, using the Packet Sniffer or Netflow based monitoring you can differentiate the traffic by protocol, IP addresses and MAC addresses.

Can I monitor the individual bandwidth usage of each port of my router?
Yes, using the SNMP monitoring you can monitor the traffic on each single port of your router (or PC, server, etc.)regardless of IP addresses and/or protocols used.

Which license do I need?
The licenses only differ by the number of supported sensors (25, 100, 500, 1000 and unlimited). Which license you need, depends on how many sensors you want to monitor. If you want to monitor e.g. all ports of a 24 port switch you will need 24 sensors. Please refer to the next FAQ to learn, what counts as a sensor.

What counts as a sensor?
The licensing options are based on the number of sensors. Each of the following items counts as one sensor:

• SNMP monitoring of traffic/bandwidth on one port of any device (e.g. switch, firewall, server) using the MIB2 standard (incoming and outgoing traffic count as one sensor)
• Monitoring errors/min, unicast packets/s, non-unicast packets/s on one port of a device via SNMP using the MIB2 standard (incoming and outgoing readings count as one sensor)
• Monitoring one other system parameter via SNMP (e.g. CPU, diskspace etc.) that is accessible via one OID value
• Monitoring traffic going through one local network card (NIC) via Packet Sniffing. If you use filtering then each set of filters counts as one sensor.
• Monitoring of one stream of data traffic via Netflow Monitoring. If you use filtering then each filterset counts as one sensor.
• The number of actual hardware devices is not taken into account at all, only the number of sensors. For the "unlimited licenses" the number of sensors that can be monitored is not programmatically limited by the software itself, but may be limited by your software, hardware and network. See Planning large installations of PRTG Traffic Grapher.

How many sensors can I monitor using PRTG Traffic Grapher?
Please see "Planning large installations of PRTG Traffic Grapher" on the Knowledge Base.

• Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 (32bit and 64bit)
• 64 MB RAM (128 MB and more recommended)
• 20 MB disk space for installation
• between 25kb and 300kb disk space per sensor per day for the monitoring data database

TCP/IP Network Connection
To access the web interface one of the following web browsers is required (others may also work but have not been tested):
Internet Explorer 6.0 or later
FireFox 1.0 or later

For SNMP Monitoring
The monitored device(s) must be equipped with SNMP Version 1, 2c or 3 (or an SNMP software must be installed on the device). SNMP must be enabled on the device and the machine running PRTG must be allowed access to the SNMP interface.

For Netflow Monitoring
The device must be configured to send NetFlow data packets (NetFlow Version 5) to the machine running PRTG and a Netflow Collector must be set up in PRTG.
For Packet Sniffing: Only data packets passing the local machine’s network card can be analyzed. For cross-network monitoring in switched networks the use of switches with so-called “monitoring ports” is necessary. See the manual for detailed information.

Brochure

•  Paessler PRTG brochure

Præsentationer

• On-line live demo

Guide

•  Paessler PRTG manual