Network Analyzer to spot Bottlenecks and Internet Outages

[bnga000]

Our network keeps experiencing intermittent outages throughout the office. When we go to particular websites, it times out when it used pull up the browser successfully. Other times, Office365 downloads are restricted to the point where I have to switch to our public network to download the Office365 software suite. It's not restricted to our internal LAN. However, this issue also pops up with the internal WLAN as well. From what I can tell, this issue started around the time our MSP installed their antivirus and anti-malware on all the machines including the servers. They also turned on the content filtering to restrict malware. Another thing is our office has maxed out on the voltage, I'm not sure if that's related to this issue. I thought I'd mention it.

Does anyone know of any network analyzing tools that are simple to use and will help me pinpoint the cause of the slow performance without an extended learning curve?

So far I'm looking at:

• wireshark
• total network monitor
• prtg network monitor
• caspa free
• LAN sweeper
• manage engine netflow analyze
• the dude
• solarwinds netflow traffic analyzer

Thanks in advance

 

[PliotronX]

Scrutinizer was free for 10 IPs last I knew and targeting 10 critical devices makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how the base license jumps from free to like $10k for 50 IPs (I'm way off but I'm not exaggerating too much).

 

[ylin0811]

Use wireshark and see if you see excessive tcp retransmits/duplicate acks during the download (most likely you will see them, since tcp will go into slow start state once there is enough packet loss). If you do see them, use winmtr to further isolate the path where the packet loss is occurring on the internal side. Don't pay attention to packet loss occurring after the packet reaches the provider's gateway, as it is not accurate.

 

[sdifox]

I thought the whole point to having a MSP is so that you dont have to deal with this? Do you have access to gateway, firewall and ap logs?

 

[XavierMace]

First thing to be aware of it NetFlow is referring to a specific technology, not just generally network traffic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetFlow. Therefore for ME or Solarwinds tools to be of any use to you, your network will have to be using devices that support NetFlow and those devices will have to be configured to export said NetFlow data to the tool. We use Solarwinds at my company but that's not a tool I would consider for a one time usage. If you're wanting to see this data on an ongoing basis, then that's a different story.

I thought the whole point to having a MSP is so that you dont have to deal with this? Do you have access to gateway, firewall and ap logs?

Also, yes.

 

[bnga000]

The MSP and the company interests don't always align and you don't want to be in a situation whereby if you're switching MSPs, there's downtime because you expected them to do everything.

As for access to gateway, firewall ... yes. Access to ap logs ... no, not yet. They just changed them out and these new ones are managed through a controller on their side.

I'm just looking to be productively lazy and something that helps me view the data on an ongoing basis.