ntop-1.2a12 (Network Monitor)

Introduction

ntop is a tool that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntop is based on pcapture (ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/pcapture.tar.Z) and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform.

ntop can be used in both interactive or web mode. In the first case, ntop displays the network status on the user's terminal whereas in web mode a web browser (e.g. netscape) can attach to ntop (that acts as a web server) and get a dump of the network status. In the latter case, ntop can be seen as a simple RMON-like agent with an embedded web interface.

Compile and Install

Download source code (ntop-1.2a12.tar.gz)
http://jake.unipi.it/~deri/ntop/

Compile and Install

# cp ntop-1.2a12.tar.gz /usr/local/src
# cd /usr/local/src
# tar zxvf ntop-1.2a12.tar.gz
# chown root.root ntop-1.2a12 -R
# cd ntop-1.2a12
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Run

Type ntop

# ntop

ntop v.1.2a12 MT [i686-pc-linux-gnu] listening on [eth0]
138 Pkts/11.1 Kb [IP 10.9 Kb/Other 204]                Thpt: 2.6 Kbps/2.6 Kbps
 Host                     Act   -Rcvd-      Sent       TCP       UDP     ICMP
 www                       B    2.5 Kb    5.6 Kb       120       550   1.8 Kb

Starts ntop in web mode. Users can attach their web browsers to the specified port and browse traffic infor- mation remotely. Supposing to start ntop at the port 3000 (ntop -w 3000), the URL to access is http://host- name:3000/. Users and URLs to protect with passwords are stored in a database file. By default user/URL adminis- tration are accessible uniquely by the user admin with password admin Passwords are stored in an encrypted form into the database for further security. Please note that an HTTP server is NOT needed in order to use the program in interactive mode.

# ntop  -w  3000

Run automaticaly as a deamon. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc

...
/usr/local/sbin/ntop  -w  3000 -d

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