ntopng

Components

Remote ntopng Authentication with RADIUS and LDAP
In large organizations, it is common to have a centralised authentication system usually named AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting). Managing users typically involves the definition and enforcement of the rights to do some operations or to access certain resources in a network. Being able to grant (or deny) such rights using a centralized authentication system is the only viable solution when it comes to dealing with large organizations with hundreds, or even thousands, of users that periodically join and leave. AAA protocols include Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) and …
n2n

Use Remote Assistance to Connect to ntopng Instances
A problem same ntop users how to face with, is the ability to remote access a ntopng instance running behind a firewall. This can be solved using a VPN or other means that often require to deploy an additional network service. Some of our ntop users are familiar with n2n, an open source peer-to-peer VPN ntop developed and maintains. With n2n in essence is possible to create a network overlay that allows you to access your assets in a secure way, this regardless of your network configuration. For this reason …
nProbe

sFlow Collection and Analysis with nProbe and ntopng
sFlow, short for sampled Flow, is a sampling technology designed to export network devices information, namely: Interface counters (à la SNMP MIB-II); Traffic packets (à la ERSPAN). sFlow agents run on switches, routers, firewalls and other devices, and periodically export interface counters and traffic packets via UDP towards one or more sFlow collectors. sFlow, relying on sampling processes to periodically counters and packets, is scalable and ultra-lightweight and has been embedded into network devices by tens of vendors and manufacturers. Contrary to NetFlow (please note that in sFlow parlance the …
nDPI

Promoting Traffic Visibility: from Application Protocols to Traffic Categories in nDPI and ntopng
Often we receive emails asking question like: “how many protocols nDPI supports?”, “how do you position nDPI against commercial DPI toolkit A, B, C?”. Although these questions are reasonable, they do not grasp the significance of DPI. For years commercial toolkits have run the race for protocols: I have 200 protocols, I have 1000 protocols, I have 500. Then asking that is the meaning with the term “protocol” people list traffic from to sites like cnn.com or bbc.co.uk. But BBC is not a protocol but rather some traffic (for instance …
ntopng

Securing ntopng with SSL and Let’s Encrypt
As you know ntopng web interface supports both HTTP (default) and HTTPS. The reason why ntopng does not default to HTTPS is because we provide self-signed certificates that web browsers dislike. Fortunately today you can create a free SSL certificate recognised by all browsers by using Let’s Encrypt open certificate authority (CA). This article describes how you can do this in a few simple steps: for simplicity we limit our scope to Ubuntu/Debian but on other distro’s the procedure is similar. Install certbot as described in this article Suppose that you …
nProbe

Using nProbe and ntopng for Collecting and Visualizing Sonicwall Flows
nProbe is both a probe and a NetFlow/sFlow collector. Recently, we’ve also added added the ability to collect flows with proprietary information elements. This greatly improves nProbe flexibility as any custon, vendor-proprietary information element can be understood, correctly parsed, and exported downstream. Adding proprietary information elements to nProbe is a breeze. Indeed, it suffices to use a plain-text file with the elements description. That’s all. Once the fields have been loaded from the plain-text file, they can be treated as if they were regular fields. So for example they can …
nEdge

Say hello to ntopng and nEdge 3.6: Timeseries with TimeShift and InfluxDB
ntopng 3.6 release is paving the way to metrics-based traffic analysis. We have finally put ntopng on top of a timeseries-independent layer that allowed us to currently RRD and InfluxDB and in the future other backends. This means that you can now also (you can for instance use ntopng as a flow exporter and as a Grafana data source) use ntopng as a time series datasource (see the timeseries API for further information) or you can analyse data through the ntop web interface that has been greatly enhanced. As you …
ntopng

ntopng and Time Series: From RRD to InfluxDB, new charts with Time Shift
One of the main concern of our users is the ability to scale ntopng with a large number of hosts/protocols and hence how to scale time series. As already discussed, RRD has many limitations with the increase of number of time series, hence it was time to start exploring new paths. We decided to abstract the ntopng engine from RRD and thus open up the engine to new time series databases. This has enabled us to use InfluxDB to store time series instead of RRD, that (as already discussed) enabled …
ntopng

Learning the ntopng Lua API
ntopng is open source, that means you can read its code and modify it according to the GPL license. The current ntopng architecture is based on three layers where the top one is written in Lua and it is used to render the web interface as well to execute periodic activities. In essence the C++/Lua API is a clean way to interact and extend ntopng without having to code in C++. So far we have used this API inside the ntop team without documenting it. This has been a mistake …
ntopng

Best Practices to Secure ntopng
After a fresh install, ntopng will run using a default, basic configuration. Such configuration is meant to provide an up-and-running ntopng but does not try to secure it. Therefore, the default configuration should only be used for testing purposes in non-production environments. Several things are required to secure ntopng and make it enterprise-proof. Those things include, but are not limited to, enabling an encrypted web access, restricting the web server access, and protecting the Redis server used by ntopng as a cache. Here is the list of things required to …
ntopng

How ntop built a web-based traffic analysis and flow collection with InfluxDB
A couple of days ago InfluxData hosted a ntop webinar about how we have integrated InfluxDB into ntopng. Those who have not attended it can give a look at the presentation slides as well watch the webinar. In essence: ntopng is based on RRD for timeseries As networks grow, ntopng needs to store more time series more granular. RRD is file based, that is a good things as configuration is minimal, but it does not scale on mid/large networks. We need an alternative, and found InfluxDB to be the best option …
ntopng

How to use ntopng in compliance with GDPR
Today the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is effective in the European Union. GDPR is designed to protect personal data and thus preserve privacy in particular as specified in articles 13 to 22, and 34. As we manufacture tools for traffic monitoring, we’ve to make sure that our tools can be used in compliancy with GDPR. In particular we’ve implemented a couple of features that can be useful: If you go select “Preferences” from the ntopng menu, and click on the “Misc” pane you can access the preference for …

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