Joining a slew of management vendors, AdventNet last week announced it would launch a NetFlow-based bandwidth-monitoring tool to help network administrators identify application traffic on their nets and manage bandwidth consumption.

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer 4 (despite the “4” in the name, this is a new product) is a Web-based bandwidth-monitoring tool that gathers statistics from Cisco devices. The company says the application will help network managers "understand the impact of application traffic on network performance and determine what applications consume excess bandwidth."

Companies such as Fluke Networks, Network General, NetQoS and NetScout also provide specific products or features to track NetFlow traffic on enterprise networks.

NetFlow is a data export format in Cisco gear that views router traffic statistics on a per-flow basis. The data can give network managers an idea of what applications are talking to each other most and which business units are consuming the most IT resources, such as bandwidth.

For example, administrators who know how many packets and bytes are sent to and from certain IP addresses or across specific network interfaces can create usage-based departmental charge-back systems. The data can also be used to traffic-engineer networks for optimum performance.

AdventNet says it NetFlow Analyzer's bandwidth monitoring capabilities enable IT managers to:
* Determine bandwidth usage patterns across LAN and WAN links without having to deploy expensive hardware probes.
* Drill down to see the exact host, application, and conversation that caused a network bottleneck.
* Identify underutilized links.
* Generate historical reports that indicate usage trends and help in capacity planning.

NetFlow Analyzer is available for a free 30-day trial at:
http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/netflow/download.html

Pricing for the product following the trial ranges from a low of less than $1,000 to a high of about $3,000.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.