How to monitor traffic using LAN traffic monitoring software?

How to use LAN traffic monitoring software for traffic monitoring?

LAN traffic monitoring and traffic management have always been a challenge in LAN management.

Generally speaking, there are two solutions for monitoring and restricting LAN traffic:

1. Serial connection-based traffic allocation.

The traffic monitor (traffic control) in the Linux operating system can achieve traffic control by establishing a queue at the output port. By using a Linux gateway, the traffic of each machine can be set. There are also corresponding LAN management software available on the market that can allocate traffic.

The key point of this solution is that it must use either a gateway or bridge connection method, which will have some impact on network speed.

Additionally, fixed traffic allocation is relatively rigid and cannot make effective use of internet bandwidth. For example, when the internet bandwidth is idle, client machines can only use the allocated traffic, resulting in wasted bandwidth resources.

The advantage lies in being able to precisely allocate traffic.

2. Out-of-band traffic monitoring restriction.

If precise traffic allocation is not required, out-of-band monitoring can also be used to monitor traffic. The out-of-band monitoring method uses the port mirroring function of switches to analyze and restore data. It can similarly monitor the internet traffic of each machine and block the use of P2P software. The advantage of the out-of-band method is easy deployment without affecting network speed.

LAN traffic monitoring software can provide the following functions in terms of traffic monitoring:

1. Real-time traffic monitoring, monitoring real-time traffic for each computer.

2. LAN traffic monitoring software can block protocols that consume more bandwidth, such as: P2P, online video, downloading, etc.

3. LAN speed-limiting software can prohibit certain computers from accessing the internet during peak traffic times. For example, when the real-time internet bandwidth reaches 80% of the total bandwidth, it can prohibit certain computers from going online.