Plixer Scrutinizer

Plixer offers a diverse range of free and commercial flow measuring and monitoring tools, from network traffic reporting to network behaviour analysis. Plixer Scrutinizer is a free NetFlow and sFlow traffic analysis and reporting solution, giving you a quick answer to slow network traffic, based on users and applications.

The world’s first real-time web-powered NetFlow and sFlow tool gives you custom reports in a single dashboard where you can quickly drill down to specific routers, interfaces and user applications to verify traffic details from several geographically disparate locations on your network.

Using Cisco’s NetFlow Technology (an IOS software feature found in an ever increasing number of switches and routers), Scrutinizer is able to retrieve the traffic flow data and present it in an intuitive, clear graphical view.

Scrutinizer Download

The free version of Scrutinizer allows you to drill down on 24 hours worth of data to get the lowdown on network utilisation. You also have the option to upgrade to the Flow Analytics add-on to get full archiving functionality and historical network trend analysis on data such as Top Applications, Top Hosts, Top Applications per Host, Top Hosts per Application and Top Conversations.

The latest release of Plixer Scrutinizer is Version 8.5 and allows users increased flexibility in network security management. Scrutinizer 8.5 includes reporting for Cisco performance monitor reports, Sonicwall support and application identification.

Enhancements available with Scrutinizer version 8.5 include reporting on Cisco’s new Network Performance Monitoring for Medianets with a new Flow Analytics algorithm for Cisco Performance Monitor Reports, showing VoIP features including jitter, packet loss, and latency.
This technology provides companies with deep insight into call quality of every VoIP connection and video stream which is an advancement from the limitations of IP SLA. Scrutinizer's extensive support for Flexible NetFlow (the latest version of NetFlow) is what makes Plixer's implementation of Cisco Performance Monitor Reports so comprehensive.

The newest version of Scrutinizer also includes Mailinizer Email Analyzer in the core feature set. Mailinizer is highly customisable and offers detailed views of email server communications for Microsoft Exchange administrators. It has proved useful to administrators seeking further information relating to troubleshooting mail problems, managing marketing use of email and reporting Mail and Network Traffic Details.

Reports include, but are not limited to:

  • Senders by message and order by count or size
  • Receivers by message and order by count or size
  • Domains (sending and receiving) and order by count or size
  • Conversations (Sender to Receiver) and order by count or size
  • Conversations with Subject (Sender to Receiver) and order by count or size
  • Popular Email Subjects and order by count or size
  • Email Volume and order by count or size

Additionally, Scrutinizer 8.5 now includes:

  • Support for Advanced Flexible NetFlow and IPFIX with cross template reporting
  • Support for SonicWALL NetFlow configuration and SonicWALL IPFIX
  • SonicWALL IPFIX Reporting on the top URLs, intrusions, and viruses as well as user names
  • Deep packet application recognition using Cisco NetFlow NBAR which provides the ability to identify applications beyond HTTP
  • NetFlow billing module
  • Reports on MAC Address, VLANs and other layer 2 information using NetFlow and IPFIX exports from SonicWALL, nProbe, Enterasys, Cisco, and Juniper
  • Template selection when viewing Cisco ASA NetFlow exports
  • Network Performance Monitoring (e.g. Jitter, Packet loss and round trip time) all with NetFlow
  • VoIP reporting on individual or subnet call quality
  • Intelligent Template Recognition(TM) to display reports
  • NetFlow Lite (NFlite) support
  • PDF Reporting
  • Alarm on any type of traffic you want to watch for (Netflix)
  • Reporting on top domains (e.g. Facebook, CNN, etc.) and the URLs being used
  • iPhone and other hand held reporting by using Layer 2 filters

Recently touted by Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates as the best pure play he’s seen for NetFlow reporting, Scrutinizer also features improved styling and graphing, and the Google map engine has been updated.

View Scrutinizer Screenshots: