Network Bandwidth Monitor Functionality Description

10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor is a network device traffic monitor, which allows you to obtain online data on time about the inbound and outbound traffic through the network hosts interfaces. It displays the speed data dynamic, and traffic statistics about each host during the defined period of time. The Program detects the critical speed values and traffic volume exceeding, network interface operation errors, and warns administrator about them using various ways.

The program's functionality is based on periodic polling of defined sensors. Depending on the result, the collected information about traffic volume is analyzed and processed. While the values are analyzed, the current speed of transferring is determined. The changes dynamic is displayed in a diagram. Also, this statistic is recorded to files. The reports and diagrams are formed and based on this statistic. While the traffic is being monitored, the program keeps up with exceeding traffic values and volume that had been defined.

For every monitored network interface, you need to create a "traffic sensor" which will count the network traffic going through the interface. The program builds diagrams and charts based on the information the sensor gets from the host. The charts allow you to analyze the traffic consumption and network bandwidth usage.

10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor offers you a various ways of obtaining the statistic of using the traffic by remote hosts (SNMP, WMI, and remote agents). It allows you to install the program on the networks with different kinds of security policies and device types. 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor can monitor bandwidth and traffic consumption on switches, routers, network printers, servers, workstations working under different operating systems that support SNMP, IP PBX, etc.

User can configure the program's response to particular events, for example, to exceeding or reduction of bandwidth, traffic volume, or occurring network errors. Those notifications include: displaying a predefined message, playing a sound file, running external programs and commands with parameters, placing a record to log, sending a short message (SMS) to a mobile phone, sending an e-mail message, restarting/shutting down a service or a computer.

The advantage of the application is that it has a powerful network scanner that allows finding the greatest possible number of hosts and placing them to the monitoring list.

Employing 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor makes it essentially easier to monitor processes of the traffic utilizing and data transfer channel capacity in the network. You may even learn about minor network applications activity or view the bugs history in interface operation. Also, you are able to trace the statistics of using the network traffic by certain hosts during the particular period of time, and stop the network overload on time. 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor is a perfect instrument to monitor the switch network interfaces' operability. The administrator may be warned about ports overload.

10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor offers two ways of creating the monitoring list. The first one is automatic. The application, according to user-defined IP ranges and scanning methods, finds networked devices. Available searches include: pinging over the ICMP protocol, scanning specified TCP ports and attempting to convert IP addresses to MAC addresses (the ARP ping). The application runs multiple simultaneous threads to search for devices within specified address range. The application can find devices with active SNMP agents: switches, network printers, routers, etc. The second method is manual. The application allows creating nested group-folders, adding hosts with specified names or addresses to them. Using the mouse pointer, you can easily move hosts from one folder to another.

The bandwidth monitoring mechanism operates as a Windows service in the 24/7 mode without user intervention. It allows you to install the application on a server or any single computer. The image below shows how the program modules (GUI application and monitoring services) interact.

The bandwidth monitoring service gathers the bandwidth data from network hosts using SNMP, WMI, agents and analyzes it. The service checks the traffic and bandwidth thresholds and raises alerts if necessary. The graphic program's GUI part allows you to view the gathered data, build diagrams, watch stats. With its help, you can add and configure new hosts and traffic sensors.

While the program collects the traffic data, it maintains the statistics database. Using the stats, you are able to generate charts, diagrams, and reports for any period of time and. The statistics maintaining mechanism prevents the database from unlimited growth, creates backup copies of the stats files, and cleans up the database.