This software provides a small set of tools for passive network monitoring. It measures, accounts, and aggregates both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.
Pmacct is an excellent set of passive network monitoring tools that allow users to measure, account, and aggregate IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. The software's aggregation feature revolves around the concept of primitives, including VLAN id, source and destination MAC addresses, hosts, networks, AS numbers, ports, IP protocol, and ToS/DSCP field, which can be combined to build custom aggregation methods. Pmacct also offers support for historical data breakdowns, triggers and packet tagging, filtering, and sampling.
One of the significant benefits of Pmacct is its ability to store aggregates into memory tables, SQL databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, or print them to stdout. The software collects data from the network in two ways - either by using libpcap (with optional promiscuous mode) or reading NetFlow v1/v5/v7/v8/v9 and sFlow v2/v4/v5 datagrams, both unicast and multicast.
Pmacct is especially useful for ISP/IXP network operations like billing, graphing network resources usage, live or historical traffic analysis, handling of network thresholds, provisioning, and SLA monitoring. It offers finer granularity than SNMP counters, which makes it possible to match logical entities of interest ranging from Autonomous System Numbers to departmental or customer network chunks and specific traffic flows. This is helpful in handling high amounts of data that large-scale networks produce in short periods.
Furthermore, pmacct has advanced filtering and sampling capabilities that are highly essential in traffic aggregation. Users can store data in memory or SQL tables as a back-end storage system, which they can easily feed to tools like RRDtool, MRTG, Cacti, and Gnuplot among others. Users can also integrate Pmacct with external tools by using scripting abilities. Sample scripts and tutorials are already available to assist users in this regard.
One of the significant benefits of Pmacct is its ability to store aggregates into memory tables, SQL databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, or print them to stdout. The software collects data from the network in two ways - either by using libpcap (with optional promiscuous mode) or reading NetFlow v1/v5/v7/v8/v9 and sFlow v2/v4/v5 datagrams, both unicast and multicast.
Pmacct is especially useful for ISP/IXP network operations like billing, graphing network resources usage, live or historical traffic analysis, handling of network thresholds, provisioning, and SLA monitoring. It offers finer granularity than SNMP counters, which makes it possible to match logical entities of interest ranging from Autonomous System Numbers to departmental or customer network chunks and specific traffic flows. This is helpful in handling high amounts of data that large-scale networks produce in short periods.
Furthermore, pmacct has advanced filtering and sampling capabilities that are highly essential in traffic aggregation. Users can store data in memory or SQL tables as a back-end storage system, which they can easily feed to tools like RRDtool, MRTG, Cacti, and Gnuplot among others. Users can also integrate Pmacct with external tools by using scripting abilities. Sample scripts and tutorials are already available to assist users in this regard.
What's New
Version 20090314: N/A