Documentation forNetFlow Traffic Analyzer
Analyzing network traffic and bandwidth is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Advanced edition. NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is also available in a standalone module.

Top XX Applications

This widget provides a view of the top XX applications responsible for monitored traffic on your network, ranked in order of traffic volume.

When placed on the Node Details or Interface Details view, this widget provides a view of the applications responsible for the most traffic passing through the viewed node or interface over the selected period of time.

This widget shows only applications whose monitoring has been enabled on the Manage Applications and Service Ports view. Data for ports and applications whose monitoring is not enabled are collected, aggregated, and shown in the Top XX Applications widget as Unmonitored Traffic. For more information about monitored ports and applications, see Configuring Monitored Ports and Applications.

If you are seeing no data in the Top XX Applications view, make sure you are receiving data for the flow type selected in the top right of the Top Applications panel. If monitoring NBAR2 applications for which you are not seeing a name identified for the application, see NBAR2 Applications for an explanation of how these applications are classified in NTA.

View more details about displayed applications

  • Click a listed application to open the NetFlow Applications Summary view that presents statistics for the selected application. For more details, see NetFlow Application Summary view.
  • Click + to expand a listed application and display the list of nodes and their respective interfaces over which the selected application traffic is currently flowing.
  • Click a node or interface to display the NetFlow Application detail view showing statistics for the selected application traffic traversing through the appropriate node or interface. For more details, see NetFlow Application view.

View details about NBAR2 applications

If you select NBAR2 in the drop-down in the top-right corner of the Top XX Applications widget, NTA populates the chart with the top NBAR2 applications identified by name.

If you deployed SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted 2022.2, NBAR2 applications are identified by name and application vendor icon. Hover over the icon of the application vendor to see the name of the vendor.

  • Click a listed application to open the NetFlow Applications Summary view that presents statistics for the selected application. For more details, see NetFlow Application Summary view.
  • Click + to expand a listed application and display the list of nodes and their respective interfaces over which the selected application traffic is currently flowing.
  • Click a node or interface to display the NetFlow Advanced Application detail view showing statistics for the selected application traffic traversing through the appropriate node or interface. For more information, see Advanced Application Details.

View unmonitored traffic

If there are applications whose monitoring is not enabled in the Manage Applications and Service Ports page, the Top XX Applications widget on a summary view displays the Unmonitored Traffic item. This item aggregates traffic coming from ports or applications whose monitoring is not enabled at the moment.

  1. Click the Unmonitored Traffic item to go to the NetFlow Applications Summary view filtered by unmonitored traffic.
  2. Consult the Top XX Applications widget. The widget will list unmonitored applications, and allow you to monitor appropriate ports.

Enable monitoring of unmonitored ports

If you are viewing the Top XX Applications widget on an Unmonitored Traffic view, you can enable monitoring of unmonitored ports:

  1. In the list of unmonitored applications, click Monitor Port to enable monitoring of the port.
  2. On the Monitor Application window, select the port(s) to monitor.
  3. Select the Source and Destination IP Address and the protocol to monitor.
  4. Enter a Description, and then click Add Application to enable monitoring.

    You can also enable monitoring for these applications and ports on the Manage Applications and Service Ports page. For more details, see Configuring Monitored Ports and Applications.

Top XX Applications (Endpoint Centric)

You can customize an endpoint-centric version of this widget and place it on the NetFlow Node Details or Interface Details view.

The endpoint-centric Top XX Applications widget provides a ranked list of applications responsible for traffic passing through the specified node or interface.

For more information about adding endpoint-centric widgets, see Add endpoint-centric widgets to NTA views.

Table legend

The table below the chart provides the following information:

Column Title Contents
Application The application name with its assigned port number in parentheses.
Ingress Bytes, Egress Bytes
Ingress Packets, Egress Packets 		Displays the amount of data (in bytes and packets) flowing to the selected application through the viewed node or interface.
The columns displayed depend on the flow direction set in the top left corner of the view (either only Ingress Bytes, or only Egress Bytes, or both columns).
Percent (Utilization) Displays the percentage of all traffic through the viewed object attributed to use of the listed application.

The first value describes the percentage of the appropriate item based on items shown by the chart. Individual items in the legend add up 100%. This percentage can be absolute or relative. For more information, see Set the Percentage type for Top XX lists.

A value in parentheses is available only for interfaces. It describes how the appropriate item utilizes the interface bandwidth in percentage.

If the utilization is approximately twice as high as it should be, for example 150% instead of 75%, it might be caused by flow duplication. For more information, see Resolve duplicate flows.

Edit the widget

If you are logged in using a User ID with administrative privileges, you can change the way this widget is displayed for all users:

  1. Click Edit to load the Edit Resource page.
  2. Make changes.
  3. Click Submit.

Edit time and flow direction for the view

You can also change the time period and flows direction shown by all widgets in the view:

  1. Directly below the view name, click next to the appropriate setting and define the appropriate settings.
  2. Change the Relative Time Period, by default set to 1 hour prior to the current time, or specify a specific time period.

The time and flow direction settings are limited to the current session only. After you leave the view, your changes will be lost and default settings are re-applied.