Network Load over Time Statistics

Analyzing Network Load Distribution

You can use the Network Load over Time Stats of the MaaTec Network Analyzer to check the share in network load of different protocols, computer systems (in your LAN or in the internet), connections, or a combination of these (e.g. network connections with protocol). For a quick overview of your network traffic you can also use the real-time statistics. But the Network Load over Time Statistics will display the top causers of network traffic over a configurable period of time. You can choose between different chart types and layouts. All settings are available on the Load over Time page of the Network Analyzer's settings dialog:

The other settings pages of the dialog allow to configure the usual protocol and address filters. These allow to restrict the network data that will be captured for the statistics. This way you can easily analyze only a subset of computer systems or protocols (e.g. display HTTP and FTP traffic but hide SMB/CIFS data).

Network Load over Time Parameters

The most important settings of the load over time network statistics are:

• Statistics Module: The statistics module specifies the type of traffic that shall be analyzed. You can choose here among others: 'Traffic per Protocol', 'Internet Traffic per System', or 'Internet Traffic A<->B with Protocol (Detailed)'. Please note that the MaaTec Network Analyzer allows to switch off its 'Easy Statistics Mode' in the Tools menu. If you do this, the names of the statistics modules will change and contain more technical terms (e.g. 'Internet Traffic per System' will become 'L3 Address Statistics'). Therefore you gain access to more than 50 statistics modules that can also display network statistics about lower layer protocols.
• Value: Every statistics module can display multiple types of values. You can choose one in the Values list of the settings dialog, e.g. Total KB, Sent Packets, or Rec. MB. If you want to monitor more than one value, you can either use the table based standard statistics, or you can, of course, open more than one load over time statistics window.
• Chart type: You can use different chart types to display the network traffic history. Here you find more information about the available network chart types.
• Number of groups: This is the number of lines in a line chart, the number of stacked sub-bars per bar in a stacked bar chart, or the number of bars per group in a group bar or deep bar chart. Please note that always one value group ('other') is used to display data traffic that could not be assigned to one of the visible groups (this includes possible rounding differences). The Network Analyzer will always show the data groups that caused the most traffic over the period of time that is displayed in the chart. Therefore all captured data for the displayed period is summed up and sorted every time a new entry is added to the chart. So if you choose to display 6 groups in the chart, you will get the top 5 traffic causers and the 'other' group.
• Number of values: This is the number of points per line, of bars, or of bar groups in a chart.
• Time per entry: This is the number of seconds that are used to capture data for each new entry in the chart. The chart will always display the cumulated data traffic that was measured during this period (e.g. Total kilobytes per 5 seconds), not a normalized value.

Other settings allow to change the look and scaling mode of the chart or to specify the legend position. As you can see, you can use these network statistics for short-term analysis (e.g. 60 entries with 1 second per entry) or long-term traffic stats (e.g. 24 hour summary with 24 entries and 3600 seconds per entry).

Exporting the Network Charts

If you obtained any important results, you may want to save the chart for documentation purposes. The fastest way to copy the chart into another application is to use the clipboard. Just press Ctrl-C on the keyboard or use the Edit menu to copy the currently displayed chart as enhanced metafile to the clipboard. Now you can paste it into any application that supports the EMF format. You may need to resize the chart in the target application as the chart will often be reformatted and some legend entries may overlap after pasting.

You can also save the chart to disk (Ctrl-S, File menu, or toolbar). The chart can be saved as PNG, BMP, or EMF file. If you choose a bitmap format, you can configure the bitmap size and resolution in the Save dialog. Higher resolutions will increase the size (in pixels) of the legend and axis text. So be sure to use an adequate bitmap size or the labels may overlap. The recommended export format is PNG 8 bit. This will create very small bitmap files that can be used by most actual applications that can work with images.