Timezone based reporting in NetFlow Analyzer

Managing a Corporate network spread across the globe is a highly challenging task for the Network Administrator. When it comes to bandwidth monitoring and generating traffic reports for each location, based on their time zone is a painful task faced by every network admin. Of course there will be localizations within the network with individual Administrator’s across the globe to monitor their own segment of the network.

NetFlow Analyzer  serves many corporate networks to successfully manage bandwidth and monitor traffic through their network devices. This blog focuses on the time zone based traffic report generation feature.

 Consider a network which spread globally across 4 location and using NetFlow Analyzer  to monitor the bandwidth. The have office in (Japan, China, India and US). The NetFlow Analyzer is installed on the Head Office in (US), NetFlow data are exported from devices at each location to the central Head office NetFlow Analyzer through MPLS.

NetFlow Analyzer parse all NetFlow data received and stores the record in its server time.

Time zone based reporting:

Assuming that the Network Administrator in the US manages all other locations including the Head Quarters, his job is to monitor the entire network with the help of administrators at each location. The role of administrators at each location is to manage and monitor devices that belongs to their location. Since these administrators are located in various time zone, it would be better if the reports generated from NetFlow Analyzer are with their respective time zones.

Device Grouping :

The Administrator in US managing the entire network and NetFlow Analyzer server, creates a device group for all the three location and associated the Devices that belong to each location to the concerned device group.

Assigning the Devices to User:

He then created a user access(Operator Level) for each location administrator with their respective time zones and associated the device group that belongs to them.

Once the users are created, each location users can log in to NetFlow Analyzer and generate reports based on their time zone. Users can generate reports for their devices alone. They can also create Alerts for the devices being monitored.So, when threshold violation occurs they will get an alert.
Administrator can also change their time zone, when generating report for device located in different time zones.

Apart from these time zone based view, the schedule report, alerts can also be configured with time zone.

Click here to know the features available and click Download to install the product on your network to evaluate its capability.

Praveen Kumar
NetFlow Analyzer Technical Team