Understanding what NetFlow can do for your network

Traffic on the network can provide valuable insight into many areas of business and technology that would generally go un-noticed unless reported on or analyzed. NetFlow is one very simple technology that can be used to see what is really on your network.

NetFlow can be used to analyze many things such as:

• Email trend and spam analysis
• Employee Internet usage
• Suspicious network activity
• Legal claims
• Virus, worm, and spyware detection

…but that is not all. Essentially everything you can create a query for using the parameters NetFlow tracks can be analyzed.

At NetCal, we primarily use this for things like tracking who is over-using an Internet connection, where someone was going on the Internet at a particular time, or looking up what we think might be suspicious network activity.