What is ntop?
ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntop is based on libpcap and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform and on Win32 as well.
ntop users can use a a web browser (e.g. netscape) to navigate through ntop (that acts as a web server) traffic information and get a dump of the network status. In the latter case, ntop can be seen as a simple RMON-like agent with an embedded web interface. The use of:
- a web interface
- limited configuration and administration via the web interface
- reduced CPU and memory usage (they vary according to network size and traffic)
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What ntop can do for me?
- Sort network traffic according to many protocols
- Show network traffic sorted according to various criteria
- Display traffic statistics
- Store on disk persistent traffic statistics in RRD format
- Identify the indentity (e.g. email address) of computer users
- Passively (i.e. withou sending probe packets) identify the host OS
- Show IP traffic distribution among the various protocols
- Analyse IP traffic and sort it according to the source/destination
- Display IP Traffic Subnet matrix (who's talking to who?)
- Report IP protocol usage sorted by protocol type
- Act as a NetFlow/sFlow collector for flows generated by routers (e.g. Cisco and Juniper) or switches (e.g. Foundry Networks)
- Produce RMON-like network traffic statistics
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