Network traffic analysis is the process of recording and analyzing network traffic for the purpose of performance, security and network operations and management.
It is the process which uses manual and automated techniques to review microscopic-level detail and statistics within network traffic.
Network traffic analyser is helpful to improve network performance, efficiency and security.
Network traffic analysis is primarily done to get in depth insight into what type and how much of traffic/network packets or data is flowing through a network. network traffic analysis is done through a network monitoring or network bandwidth monitoring software.
The traffic statistics from network traffic analysis helps in:
-> Understanding and evaluating the network utilization
-> Download/upload speeds
-> Type, size, origin and destination and content/data of packets
-> Network security staff uses network traffic analysis to identify any malicious or suspicious packets within the traffic.
-> network administrations seek to monitor download/upload speeds, throughput, content, etc. to understand network operations.
Network traffic analysis is also used by attackers/intruders to analyze network traffic patterns and identify any vulnerabilities or means to break in or retrieve sensitive data.
Advantage of Network traffic analyser
-> Copy traffic running through a network and send that traffic to network traffic analyzers improve network efficiency and security.
-> Found in large data networks in every industry vertical.
-> Provide permanent ports for network, application and security analysis solutions.
-> Improve the performance of network, application and security solutions
-> Decrease the MTTR by faster resolution of network, application and security issues.
-> Increase the ROI of network traffic analyzers .
-> Decrease the reliance on switch and router resources for network traffic visibility.
Network traffic analysis requires an understanding of how networking works. There’s no tool that will magically remove the requirement for an analyst to understand the basics of networking such as the TCP three-way. Analysts should also have some understanding of the types of network traffic that exist on a normally functioning network such as ARP and DHCP traffic. This knowledge is essential because analyzing tools will just show you what you ask.It’s up to you to know what to ask for. If you’re not sure how your network looks normally, it can be hard to ensure you’re digging for the right thing in the mass of packets you’ve collected.
Tools used for the network traffic analyser
1. SolarWinds Deep Packet Inspection and Analysis tool2. NAST
3. tcpdump
4. Windump
5. Zenmap
6. Wireshark
7. tshark
8. Angry IP Scanner
9. Fiddler (HTTP)
10. JDSU Network Analyzer Fast Ethernet
11. Capsa
12. Network Miner etcs.
In conclusion,the tool mentioned above, it is not a big task to see how a systems administrator could build an on-demand network monitoring infrastructure. Tcpdump or Windump could be installed on all servers. A scheduler, such as cron or Windows scheduler, could kick off a packet collection session at some time of interest and write those collections to a pcap file. At some later time, a sysadmin can transfer those packets to a central machine and use Wireshark is used to analyze them. If the network is so large that this cannot be used., then enterprise level tools like the SolarWinds suite can be used to that network data into a manageable data set.
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