How do I find the IP addresses that are generating the most traffic?

Products

• PacketShaper

Issue/Introduction

If you want to discover what individual IP addresses are generating the most traffic for a specific type of traffic, you can use the Top Talkers/Top Listeners feature. Or, if you want to discover the host that is generating the most traffic on the network during a period of time, you can use the adaptive response feature.

Resolution

Using the Top Talkers/Top Listeners Feature

For details on using the Top Talkers/Top Listeners feature, see Track Hosts that Generate the Most Traffic in PacketGuide.

Keep in mind that the Top Talkers/Top Listeners feature is not historical in nature -- it is real time. This means that if you turn on Top Talkers/Top Listeners for a class, you can see the IP addresses generating the traffic at the moment. But you can't use this feature to find out after the fact. Additionally, resetting the unit will reset the Top Talkers/Top Listeners counters. One way to get historical Top Talker/Top Listener data is to use the 7.x Flow Detail Record (FDR) feature in conjunction with Packeteer ReportCenter 3.0.

In ReportCenter 3.0, you can specify how long you want to keep the data; for example, you may want to keep hourly data for six weeks and monthly data for two years. You also have an increased number of Top Talkers/Listeners (PacketWise offers a maximum of 12 per traffic class; in ReportCenter 3.0, this value is user specified.) For more information, see Flow Detail Records Overview in PacketGuide.

Using the Adaptive Response Feature

One of the adaptive response agents, called High Bandwidth Host, tracks the bandwidth usage of individual hosts on your network. If a single host's traffic exceeds a certain percent of the link size, the adaptive response feature will alert you that a threshold has been exceeded. It will also generate a report that lists the IP addresses and their average rate during the interval, with the highest bandwidth consumer listed at the top of the report.

For step-by-step instructions on using the High Bandwidth Host agent, see Identify and Control High Bandwidth Hosts in PacketGuide.