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I currently make use of a NETGEAR FVS338 firewall and a NETGEAR 24 port switch. Is there a way to graphically or in some way monitor their traffic?

Edit: Switch Model FS726T

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  • If you can edit your question with the specific model of Netgear switch, I might be able to give you more information in my answer below. – Brett Lykins Jul 8 '13 at 5:33
  • Use WireShark or CommView. They're very good tools. – Jet Jul 11 '13 at 7:17
  • Did any answer help you? If so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you can post and accept your own answer. – Ron Maupin♦ Jan 4 at 22:30
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The FVS338 firewall has SNMP v1 and v2c support according to the Netgear documentation on it (listed under Management Features).

The FS726T switch also supports SNMP v1 according to it's documentation (listed under Administrative Switch Management).

Therefore, any number of free or paid NMS systems could give you the graphical information you're looking for.

For a small setup like this, I'd recommend something along the lines of CactiEZ for graphing your data gathered via SNMP.

Now as a note, SNMP v1 is not a secure way to monitor/maintain your network equipment. Where possible, (it is not in this case) I recommend using SNMP v3. There are several authentication and encryption enhancements in v3 that are well worth implementing to secure your network management setup. You don't have that ability to do so on this gear, because sometimes the lack of newer/more secure features is what you trade off for lower price.

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  • I also recommend Cacti , its my Open Source graphing tool of choice – DrBru Jul 8 '13 at 9:40
  • I tried using CactiEZ but it kept getting hung on the bootup/install. – Jason Pass Jul 8 '13 at 19:52
  • Depending on the error you're receiving, the Cacti user forum may be the place to start. They're a pretty great and helpful group of people over there. Link for CactiEZ install trouble: forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48682&start=45 – Brett Lykins Jul 8 '13 at 20:25
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Have a look at NTOP I used this in smaller enterprise deployments to find and identify possible flow anomalies.

ntopng ntopng, the next generation version of the original ntop, a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntopng is based on libpcap and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform, MacOSX and on Win32 as well.

What ntopng can do for me?

  • Sort network traffic according to many protocols
  • Show network traffic and IPv4/v6 active hosts
  • Store on disk persistent traffic statistics in RRD format
  • Geolocate hosts
  • Discover application protocols by leveraging on nDPI, ntop’s DPI framework.
  • Characterise HTTP traffic by leveraging on characterisation services provided by block.si. ntopng comes with a demo characterisation key, but if you need a permanent one, please mail info@block.si.
  • 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) when used together with nProbe.
  • Produce HTML5/AJAX network traffic statistics
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  • Tried NTop and I found it very glitchy and not the easiest to work with. I had to do a lot of manual work and I still don't seem to have it working. – Jason Pass Jul 8 '13 at 19:52
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There is also mrtg (http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/), multi platform and free.

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to setup SNMPd on the firewall, have a look at page 154 and further of this manual http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/FVS338_RM_28Jan2010.pdf

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Once you get snmp up and running, you can use Cacti to graphically plot your interfaces. It works real well...been using it for years. Oh, and it's free!

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Some proprietary stuff I have used in the past,

Solarwinds.com - good for SNMP stuff and network services monitoring. not cheap.

Does the Netgear support netflow? If so there are several good netflow graphing tools out there.

I currently work for this company, so shameless plug. http://turbosoftnetworks.com/blog/78-video-real-time-traffic-monitoring

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  • Netflow??? Be serious. They barely support SNMP. – Ricky Jan 31 '15 at 6:18

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