Introduction

This is a tool to collect network information with simple configurations. Users may use a web browser to access the current network views that include charts and statistics.

Installation

ntop is available on most Linux distributions. Below are the steps tested on Ubuntu 8.10 Linux. I am sure that ntop is available for RPM based distro like CentOS.

  apt-get install ntop
/etc/init.d/ntop -i eth0 start

Replace eth0 with the network interface name. The system will maintain a database of the network information in the /var/lib/ntop directory. Create the default admin user with:

  ntop
  • Enter the admin user password.
  • View ntop

The ntop results can be viewed with a web browser pointing to any of the URL address:

  • http://localhost:3000
  • https://localhost:3001 (this may need to be configured)

The ntop screen should have the following main menus:

  • About: What is ntop, credits, documentations and configurations.
  • Summary: Traffic, Hosts, Network load, network flows
  • All protocols: Traffic, Throughput, Activity
  • IP: Summary, Traffic directions, Local
  • Utils: Data dump, View log
  • Plugins: Lots of plugins to enable or configure
  • Admin: Configure, Shutdown

Startup settings

To change the ntop server startup settings, Select Admin -> Configure -> Startup options in the web interface.

Edit the changes as needed and save.

References

http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-and-configuring-ntop

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Last updated 05 Feb 2009, 06:07 +0200. history