Network Capacity Planning & Troubleshooting Tools
Identify Congestion, Optimize Bandwidth, and Plan Infrastructure with Real Data
Capacity decisions made on guesswork lead to two outcomes: overspending on infrastructure you don’t need, or under-provisioning links that fail under real load. ntopng and n2disk give you the historical traffic data to plan infrastructure investment with confidence, and the packet-level detail to troubleshoot problems fast when they happen.
The Problem
Planning and Troubleshooting Without Historical Data
Without accurate, long-term traffic data, common challenges include:
- Bandwidth upgrades based on rough estimates or vendor recommendations, not actual usage patterns.
- Congestion identified only after users report a problem, not proactively.
- Troubleshooting intermittent issues that can't be reproduced, with no packet-level record of what happened.
The Solution
Historical Analytics and Lossless Packet Recording
- Historical traffic analytics (ntopng): track bandwidth usage, top talkers, and application trends over days, months, or longer, the foundation for data-driven capacity planning.
- Congestion and bottleneck identification: see exactly which links, hosts, or applications are approaching capacity, and when, instead of reacting after saturation causes problems.
- Lossless packet recording (n2disk): continuously record network traffic with nanosecond-precision timestamping, so when an intermittent or hard-to-reproduce issue occurs, you have the exact packets to analyze after the fact.
- Traffic replay for testing (disk2n): replay previously captured traffic with accurate timing to test infrastructure changes, validate fixes, or reconstruct incidents in a controlled environment.
- Scales to high-throughput networks: combine with nProbe Cento and PF_RING ZC for capacity planning and recording in 100+ Gbps environments.
Use Cases
Justifying a bandwidth upgrade with data
Instead of an estimate, infrastructure teams present months of historical utilization trends showing a specific link consistently approaching capacity during business hours, turning a guess into a budget-approved upgrade.
Reproducing an intermittent network issue
A performance problem occurs sporadically and is gone by the time the team investigates. n2disk’s continuous, lossless recording means the exact packets from the incident window are available for analysis after the fact.
Planning for seasonal or growth-driven demand
Historical traffic analytics reveal usage growth trends over the past year, giving infrastructure teams the data to size upcoming capacity for projected growth rather than reacting after congestion hits.
Validating a network change before rollout
Before deploying a configuration change, teams use disk2n to replay real captured traffic against the new setup, confirming it behaves as expected under realistic conditions.
Root-causing recurring congestion
ntopng identifies that congestion consistently correlates with a specific application’s traffic pattern, allowing teams to address the actual cause, whether that’s QoS policy, scheduling, or an infrastructure bottleneck, instead of just adding bandwidth.
Why it matters
Why Teams Use ntopng and n2disk for Planning and Troubleshooting
- Data-driven decisions: historical trends replace guesswork in capacity planning conversations.
- Nothing gets missed: lossless, timestamped packet recording captures the exact moment an issue occurs.
- Faster root-cause analysis: packet-level detail available on demand, without needing to reproduce the problem live.
- Scales with your network: from single-site troubleshooting to 100+ Gbps recording and analysis.
Get started
Ready to see it on your network?
Download the free Community edition, compare editions and buy in the shop, or talk to the ntop team about your requirements.
