Absolute Newbie Question

boe

Hello,

I don't know anything about network monitoring so I won't pretend I know what I'm talking about. I can set up servers and workstations but I'm not great on setting up firewalls or routers.

A friend suggest I learn how to use solarwinds so we just got a copy. Some of the things seem very simple to figure out but my main goals are things I haven't figure out yet. These may or may not be within the Scope of Solarwinds or I'm just too new to figure it out.

I'd like to scan my network (just a simple class C network no divisions or anything fancy - about 50 workstations and a few servers)
I'd like to be able to tell what workstations are using up the most bandwidth and for what if possible (e.g. bittorrent etc)
I'd like to be able to tell if any of my workstations is generating bad traffic - not sure what it might be but a bad connection or something that might slow down our network (100 base T)

Thanks for your help and patience.

Network_Guru

Hi Boe,

Welcome to the world of Networking.
If you use a Cisco router on your network, you can use something called NetFlow to do what you want.

Just do a search in the Orion forum for Netflow & you will find several discussions & products mentioned that can do this for you.

www2.solarwinds.net/.../search.asp

Otherwise you can use a Sniffer to see the traffic on your network in realtime, but you won't be able to view historical sniffer data.
There is a free Sniffer application called Ethereal which is very good for this.

-=Cheers=-
NG