Documentation forNetFlow Traffic Analyzer
Analyzing network traffic and bandwidth is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and is also available in a standalone module, NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA). Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and NTA are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

Limit flow collections to top talkers

Up to 95% of all traffic on many networks can be captured with as little as 4% of the total amount of flow data received from monitored flow sources. If you are primarily using NTA to determine the top talkers on your network and you are currently storing 100% of the data received from monitored flow sources, you are probably storing a large amount of unnecessary data. As a result, your database may be unnecessarily large and the load times for NTA widgets and reports may be unnecessarily long. In this case, restricting flow data storage to only those flows required to represent the top bandwidth users on your network can significantly improve the performance of NTA.

The Top Talker Optimization setting, by default, captures only those flows representing the top 95% of total network traffic. By changing this setting you are permanently limiting the amount of data that is available for a historical analysis of traffic flows.

  1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.
  2. Under Product Specific Settings, click NTA Settings.
  3. Under Top Talker Optimization, edit Capture Flows Based on This Maximum Percentage of Traffic.
  4. Click Save.