WebTrafMon: Web-based Internet/Intranet network traffic monitoring and analysis system

As enterprise computing environments become more network-oriented, the importance of network traffic monitoring and analysis intensifies. Most existing traffic monitoring and analysis tools focus on measuring the traffic loads of individual network segments. Further, they typically have complicated user interfaces. As Internet and Intranet traffic increases due to the increase in the use of the World-Wide Web and other applications, determining which host and which application generates how much network traffic is becoming critical in managing and using network resources effectively. This paper presents the design and implementation of a portable, Web-based network traffic monitoring and analysis system called WebTrafMon. Web-based technology enables users to be free from complex user interfaces, while allowing monitoring and analysis results to be viewed from any site, using widely available Web browsers. WebTrafMon provides monitoring and analysis capabilities not only for traffic loads but also for traffic types, sources and destinations. WebTrafMon consists of two parts. a probe and a viewer. The probe extracts raw traffic information from the network, and the viewer provides the user with analyzed traffic information via Web browsers. The effectiveness of WebTrafMon has been verified by applying it to an enterprise network environment. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.