Caligare Flow Inspector vs SparrowIQ

Caligare Flow Inspector analyzes NetFlow exports from existing routers, without requiring deployed probes. Its web-based management interface configures collectors, network devices, application groups and anomaly detection. The software provides real-time network analysis, user data tracking, and statistics for hosts, protocols, applications and conversations. Caligare says this visibility can help identify suspicious activity, denial-of-service attacks, worm-infected stations, bottlenecks and routing trouble. The free edition supports NetFlow versions 1, 5, 6, 7 and 9, along with low-level traffic search, interface utilization, maps, filtering and forwarding. It also offers local, LDAP or external authentication and user and group management. The free license is for non-commercial use and is limited to two devices, 24-hour history and 250 flows per second. Professional and Enterprise editions add longer-term trends, network anomaly detection, unrestricted NetFlow parsing and commercial use. Linux packages are listed; the latest version requires MySQL 5.1 or newer. A 30-day trial key can be requested by email.

SparrowIQ analyzes network traffic and adds visibility alongside existing network management systems. Its dashboard updates automatically with summaries of bandwidth use, applications, destinations and timing, with interactive drilldowns. Users can set email alerts when a user, group or application exceeds its share of network resources, and generate daily, weekly or monthly reports, from executive summaries to individual activity. Monitoring uses a switch SPAN or mirror port, or a network tap. SparrowIQ examines traffic headers rather than payload data and stores analyzed information in a database on the local PC. It is installed on a Windows PC, with a browser interface accessible from a PC, Mac or mobile device, including remotely through the installation machine. The product is aimed at smaller businesses with limited technical resources, time and budget. Paid plans require a quote and can be billed monthly or annually; plan limits vary by throughput, concurrent users, reporting history and alerts. A free 15-day trial is available without a credit card.