I have been using SNMP to measure the bandwidth usage of our Palo Alto firewall and it works fine.

Is there some advantage of using Netflow vs SNMP?

Thanks, Bob

Article Comments

Hi,
it is pretty hard to talk of advantages here as this is a question of your personal preferences and needs. Please see this comparsion chart of bandwidth monitoring in PRTG to see all features of the different methods.
Best regards


Jul, 2012 - Permalink

Dear Bob,

At my company we use the Netflow sensor to have an overview of what IP uses how much bandwidth and give them warnings if they use to much data in a certain time, fair use 'n all (we have a management system that keeps track of IP and MAC). And we use SNMP bandwidth sensors to show the manager how much total traffic is used by certain segments.

Basicly, Netflow is at "user" level (IP based) and SNMP is at port level, the amount of sensors you need to check every user with SNMP is much higher then the amount of sensors you'll need using Netflow.


Jul, 2012 - Permalink

Dears,

My company has a Palo Alto PA-500, I have already enable SNMP in management interface and setup SNMP v2C in SNMP trap. but I cannot connect PA-500 by PRTG, please advise, thx.

Regards

XXX Security


Jan, 2016 - Permalink

Dear XXX Security,

Without knowing which exact error you're seeing in PRTG, I would advice to take a look at this article on guidance about SNMP not working. Especially our SNMP Tester mentioned there is helpful in determining whether or not the device responds to SNMP requests at all for example.

Kind regards.


Jan, 2016 - Permalink