Today we’re going to explore the Best sFlow Collectors and Analyzers on the market for gathering flow data to analyze and dissect for traffic and bandwidth analysis.

Network monitoring tools are a critical aspect of today’s network-driven world. There are different industry standards to monitor the traffic that passes through networks, and sFlow is one such standard. sFlow is used for monitoring high speed switched networks and gives complete visibility into the use of networks.

Users can glean rich information using this standard, that in turn, can eventually lead to performance optimization, protection against security threats, understanding bandwidth usage and more.

Since sFlow is an important industry standard, many companies have come up with tools that collect and analyze this network information.

Here’s a look into the top sFlow collectors & analyzers for traffic and bandwidth analysis.

Here’s the Best sFlow Collectors & Analyzers of 2021:

1. SolarWinds sFlow Collector Tool
2. PRTG sFlow Sensor
3. sFlowTrend
4. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer
5. Wireshark

1. SolarWinds sFlow Collector Tool – FREE TRIAL

SolarWinds sFlow Collector Tool is one of the most popular tools used for gathering and analyzing information using the sFlow standard. It’s a part of the larger network traffic analyzer suite, so users can get a truly comprehensive software that analyzes every aspect of the network, not just the sFlow standard.

Here are some of the other reasons that add to its popularity.

• Monitors bandwidth by application, protocol or IP address group.
• Drills down into any network element to provide a detailed report on it. Such detailing makes it easy to identify the root cause of a problem and to fix it quickly.
• Analyzes network traffic for any number of minutes, days, or even months.
• Comes with PerfStack cross-stack network data correlation
• Has a well-designed dashboard to monitor network traffic in real-time.
• Helps to identify the IP addresses and applications that consume a lot of network bandwidth.
• Comes with an installation and configuration wizard that makes setup a breeze.
• Makes it easy to identify bandwidth spikes

Price: 30 day Free Trial!

Official Download: https://www.solarwinds.com/netflow-traffic-analyzer/registration

2. PRTG sFlow Sensor

PRTG Network Monitor’s sFlow Sensor captures traffic data from any sFlow V5 compatible device, analyzes it and displays the traffic under pre-defined categories. There are many filter option available in this tool to divide the traffic under different categories. This sensor is a part of PRTG’s Network Monitor tool.

Besides categorization, here are other features that make the Network Monitor tool a comprehensive one for sFlow monitoring.

• No forms of registration required at the time of download.
• Installs in about three minutes and doesn’t require any additional downloads
• Browser-based interface to access data from anywhere
• Comes with an enterprise console and an interface for all mobile devices.
• 200 sensor types that cover every possible aspect of network monitoring
• Uptime/downtime monitoring and bandwidth monitoring using sFlow, SNMP, NetFlow and WMI
• 10 different notification technologies such as push message, email, SMS, Syslog trap, HTTP request, alarm sound files, event log entry and more.
• Monitors all subsidiaries and separated networks within the organization
• Dashboard displays performance and status information in real-time
• Reports generated in HTML or PDF format as well
• Reporting tasks can be scheduled
• Stores the data of thousands of sensors for many years
• Multi-language interface

Price: License for this product starts at $1,695.

Official Download: A free trial is available at https://www.paessler.com/prtg

3. sFlowTrend

sFlowTrend is a free tool from inMon and is used to generate real-time displays of network bandwidth usage based on the sFlow standard.

Source: sFlowTrend

Below are some of its salient features.

• Identifies bandwidth hogs to improve performance and reduce costs
• Monitors critical host performance parameters such as CPU and memory utilization.
• Generates reports on current and historical performance of the network.
• Quickly identifies the cause of problems and abnormal traffic patterns
• Accepts sFlow data from a maximum of five switches or hosts
• Stores one hour of data in memory
• sFlowTrend Pro has no restriction on the number of hosts or switches that can be monitored. Also, any amount of data can be stored on the disk.
• Monitors both physical and virtual server performances to provide a complete view of the network usage.
• Simple installation and a user-friendly interface makes it ideal for all users
• Supports Windows 32-bit and 64-bit OS, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Requires Java 7 or later versions, as this tool is written in Java.
• Offers a web-based interface to access data from any device and location.

Price: sFlowTrend is available for free. sFlowTrend Pro is a fully featured network monitoring tool that comes with advanced features. Contact the support team for its pricing.

Official Download: sFlowTrend can be downloaded at https://inmon.com/products/sFlowTrend.php#download. A free trial for sFlowTrend Pro is available at https://inmon.com/products/sFlowTrend-Pro.php#evaluate.

4. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer

ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer is a network bandwidth monitoring tool that offers real-time visibility into the network performance.

Source: ManageEngine

It comes with the following features.

• Monitors network bandwidth usage in real-time.
• Offers the option to create customized reports with specific details such as IP address, host name, protocol and more.
• Enables users to limit the use of bandwidth-intensive applications.
• Helps to identify the problems in network bandwidth
• Detects any internal or external security threats by constantly looking for abnormal patterns in network usage.
• Comes with a rich set of bandwidth analysis reports to get an insight into the usage pattern of applications and users within the network.
• Monitors traffic between two specific sites that were created based on an IP address or IP network.
• Provides capacity planning reports to help organizations assess the future IT requirements.
• Generates alerts and notifications based on pre-defined threshold settings

Price: Contact the sales team to get a quote

Official Download: A free trial is available at https://www.manageengine.com/products/netflow/download.html

5. Wireshark

Wireshark is a free and popular network analyzer that helps users to get a microscopic view of the network. It’s many handy features make it the de-facto tool in many commercial and non-commercial applications world over.

Source: Wireshark

Here’s a look at some of its features.

• Captures, analyzes and displays detailed information for packet data
• Comes with filters to categorize data into different groups for easy analysis
• Captures data from any number of wired, wireless and virtual devices
• Comes with a graphical as well as a text-based UI for easy understanding of network issues
• Supports Windows XP and higher versions, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux
• Provides real-time analysis of data
• Allows users to apply coloring rules for different categories
• Gives the option to export the output to a CSV, XML or plain script file.
• Reads live data from the Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, USB, FDDI and more.
• Offers VoIP analysis
• Provides decryption support for many protocols.

Price: Free

Official Download: https://www.wireshark.org/#download

Conclusion

Overall, sFlow Collector & Analyzer tool is essential to analyze packet data using sFlow standards. It’s almost impossible to manually collect and analyze packets, considering that the network size is growing every second. This makes sFlow collectors & analyzers a handy tool for managing today’s complex networks.

The above list gives a glimpse into the top sFlow collectors & analyzers available today and what they can do for any business. Let us know your favorite.