NMIS Module
opFlow
Network Traffic Flow Analysis
Application-level visibility into your network traffic. opFlow collects and presents NetFlow, sFlow, and IPFIX data so your team can identify bandwidth consumers, detect anomalies, pinpoint congestion, and make informed capacity planning decisions, all integrated with NMIS.
Architecture
opFlow Architecture
Flow collection and protocol processing through to analytics and visualisation, from exporters to dashboards.
Capabilities
Traffic visibility that SNMP alone can't provide
From real-time top talkers to historical trend analysis, opFlow shows you what's really happening on your network.
NetFlow, sFlow & IPFIX Collection
Collect and analyse flow data from all major network vendors and flow protocols. opFlow derives and summarises network traffic from any NetFlow, sFlow, or IPFIX packet sent to it.
Bandwidth Usage & Top Talkers
Identify who is consuming bandwidth, which applications dominate traffic, and which interfaces are busiest. Top Talkers reports surface your heaviest users and most-used services in real time.
Congestion & Bottleneck Analysis
Pinpoint congestion points and bandwidth bottlenecks across your network. Summary reports and conversation heat maps help you quickly isolate the source of performance degradation.
Security & Anomaly Detection
Identify malicious events like DDoS attacks by analysing traffic patterns and detecting unusual spikes or sources of high traffic. Spot suspicious behaviour early with flow-level visibility.
Conversation Heat Maps
Visualise network conversations with heat maps that highlight the most active communication paths between hosts, networks, and applications, making complex traffic patterns easy to understand.
Historical Trend Analysis
Track bandwidth trends over time for capacity planning and growth forecasting. Compare traffic patterns across time periods to validate infrastructure investments and predict future needs.
High Volume Mode & Scalability
Pre-aggregation within configurable intervals and parallel processing handle substantial traffic volumes while balancing database performance and data granularity, enabled out of the box.
Application-Level Visibility
Move beyond interface-level metrics to understand traffic at the application layer. See which protocols and applications are generating traffic for informed QoS decisions and policy enforcement.
NMIS Ecosystem
How opFlow integrates with NMIS
Application-level traffic intelligence that complements NMIS's device and interface monitoring.
NMIS Interface Resolution
opFlow integrates with NMIS to resolve interface indexes to human-readable names. Flow data is automatically associated with NMIS nodes, giving you device context for every conversation.
opCharts Dashboards
Visualise traffic flow data alongside NMIS performance metrics in opCharts dashboards. Combine flow analysis with interface utilisation charts for a complete bandwidth picture.
Complements SNMP Monitoring
While NMIS monitors interface-level utilisation via SNMP, opFlow adds application-level visibility. Together, they answer both "how full is this link?" and "what's filling it?"
Built For Your Team
Who uses opFlow
Every team that needs to understand what's happening inside their network traffic, not just how much, but what and who.
Flow-level diagnostic power
Diagnose bandwidth issues and congestion with flow-level visibility into which hosts, applications, and conversations consume capacity.
- Per-conversation bandwidth breakdown
- Conversation heat maps for pattern analysis
- Historical trends for capacity planning
Traffic intelligence for threat detection
Detect DDoS attacks, data exfiltration, and unusual traffic patterns through flow analysis and anomaly detection.
- DDoS and traffic spike detection
- Unusual source and destination identification
- Flow-level forensic investigation data
Evidence-based bandwidth reporting
Provide clients with detailed traffic analysis showing consumption by application and user, validating SLA compliance with hard data.
- Per-client bandwidth consumption reports
- Application-level usage breakdowns
- Historical trend data for SLA evidence
Under The Hood
Technical Specifications
- Flow Protocols
- NetFlow v5/v9, sFlow, IPFIX
- Collection
- nfdump/nfcapd (NetFlow/IPFIX), sfcapd (sFlow)
- Scalability
- High volume mode with pre-aggregation and parallel processing
- Data Granularity
- Configurable aggregation intervals for detail vs. performance balance
- NMIS Integration
- Automatic interface name resolution and node association
See what's really happening on your network
opFlow is included in the FirstWave VM alongside NMIS 9 and other commercial modules.
opFlow is part of the NMIS 9 platform.