Colasoft Blog

How to View and Analyze Historical Network Traffic

As a network forensic analysis application, nChronos allows users to view historical data just by a drag. Below is a screenshot of the Time Window, you can drag the trend charts back and forth to view the network traffic of any interested time period.

You can click the Set Time Window button  to set which time period to show:

When you select a time slice on the Time Window, the analysis views will only show data related to that time slice, and this is very convenient to analyze a traffic spike. Just select the spike to view and analyze the top talkers in that spike. Furthermore, you can double-click a record item to drill down it:

from: colasoft.com

What is network baseline?

Do you know what your normal network throughput volume is, what types of traffic are most used in your network? If you can’t answer these questions then you should baseline your network. Network baseline is very important to network management because the data will tell you what it’s like when everything goes all right.

To baseline your network, you need software or hardware to listen on your network or a particular device. Both Colasoft nChronos and Capsa can be used to accomplish this task. Both of them are used to listen into packet data of a wire and generate all kinds of statistics on the network. To baseline a network, you need to use them to monitor the network traffic long enough, because a wider time span presents a more real picture of network traffic pattern. The use of network baseline is listed as follows:

• Understand healthy network pattern and traffic trends.

• Evaluate network management policies compliance.

• Understand how the network resources are allocated.

• Accelerate to troubleshoot network issues, i.e. abnormal traffic and spam traffic, etc.

• Provide data on network and security management to support decision making.

• Provide history statistics on network upgrade.
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BitTorrent Consumes Big Bandwidth
Based on the working principle of BitTorrent protocol, if somebody is downloading big files with BitTorrent software, it will be a disaster for other users who need bandwidth for business operations as the user will consume large amount of bandwidth, thus causing long time network slowness, intermittence, even disconnections; because meantime the user downloading files from others, others are downloading files from him.

So it is necessary for IT administrators to track BitTorrent user at first place to regain network bandwidth for business operations. Blocking BitTorrent protocol can be one way; this article is to discuss how to track BitTorrent users with Colasoft Packet Sniffer.

How to Track BitTorrent User?

>Step1. Download a free trial and implement it correctly

>Step2. Launch a project and start capturing data

>Step3. Find BitTorrent Protocol in the “Protocols” Tab

Track BitTorrent User Screenshot 1

>Setp4. Locate BitTorrent Protocol in the “Explorer”
Use the “Locate” function to locate BitTorrent protocol in the “Explorer” to analyze dedicated data.

Track BitTorrent User Screenshot 2

>Step5. Track BitTorrent User in LAN in the “Endpoint” Tab
This is the way how to track the BitTorrent user in our network and who are connected with him. There is a lot more we can see from this tab, such as how much data has been downloaded and uploaded via BitTorrent protocol.

Track BitTorrent User Screenshot 3

View how many connections have been built in “Matrix”
You’ll be shocked to see how many connections have been built in the “Matrix” Tab. In this case, we can see this user has built more than 1000 connections with other hosts.

Track BitTorrent User Screenshot 4

About BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files.

The protocol works when a file provider initially makes his/her file (or group of files) available to the network. This is called a seed and allows others, named peers, to connect and download the file. Each peer that downloads a part of the data makes it available to other peers to download. After the file is successfully downloaded by a peer, many continue to make the data available, becoming additional seeds. This distributed nature of BitTorrent leads to a viral spreading of a file throughout peers. As more peers join the swarm, the likelihood of a successful download increases. Relative to standard Internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor’s hardware and bandwidth resource costs. It also provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor.

Next Step
>>Download a Free Trial

Internet traffic is the flow of data around the Internet. It includes web traffic, which is the amount of that data that is related to the World Wide Web, along with the traffic from other major uses of the Internet, such as electronic mail and peer-to-peer networks.

In case we want to monitor internet traffic generated or is generating in LAN, here is a detailed process how we can monitor internet traffic with Colasoft Packet Sniffer – Capsa.

We must make sure the packet sniffer software is correctly implemented so we can capture all the traffic in LAN, if you don’t know how to do it, please make sure you read how to implement a packet sniffer.

First let’s launch a new project with Colasoft Packet Sniffer, then do some online activities, such as chatting, browsing a website, sending and receiving emails, downloading some files. All these activities will generate different kinds of internet traffic. We may keep the project running to continuously monitor internet traffic or stop the project to do some analysis.

To monitor internet traffic, we’d better first select the “Internet Addresses” in the “Explorer” on the left window:

Monitor Internet Traffic Screenshot1

We can see that all the internet addresses are listed by countries, to monitor internet traffic of a specific country, we just need click on it; If we want to monitor internet traffic of a specific IP address within one country, we need to expand the country node and select the IP address in it.

Also we can monitor internet traffic aggregated or internet traffic in real-time

Monitor Internet Traffic Screenshot2

To view what online activities have generated or are generating internet traffic, we need to use the “Protocols” Tab.

Monitor Internet Traffic Screenshot1

We can see there are protocols which separately stand for different internet activities:

HTTP – Website browsing
MSN – online chatting with Live Messenger
POP3 – Email
HTTPS – Website browsing via a secure link
QQ- online chatting with QQ
DNS – Domain Name System

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web.

In order to monitor http traffic, we will need a packet sniffer (or a protocol analyzer) software. Here is a detail process how we can monitor http traffic in LAN with Colasoft Packet Sniffer – Capsa.

Again let’s launch Colasoft Packet Sniffer and start a new project. Don’t forget one thing, we have to deploy the packet sniffer to the mirror port of the core switch in order to monitor all http traffic in LAN, if not, we can only monitor http traffic of our own computer.

Then let’s start browsing a website, for example, www.colasoft.com, to generate some http traffic. Now let’s get back to the packet sniffer and see if there is http traffic. OK, we can see the packet sniffer has already captured some http traffic in the “Protocols” Tab

Monitor http Traffic Screenshot 1

We can see both the aggregated http traffic since start capturing and the real-time http traffic in this tab.

If we want to do a deeper analysis on http traffic, we will need to use the “Locate” function to locate http protocol in the Explorer to let the packet sniffer display only the data that is http protocol. Right click on the protocol and select “Locate Explorer Node” in the pop-up menu.

Locate Explorer Node

If we want to know who are using http protocol and what they are actually browsing, we are going to use two tabs, the “Endpoints” Tab and “Logs” Tab.

Let’s see who are using http protocol:

Who is Using http Protocol

And what they are actually browsing:

Monitor http Traffic Screenshot 4