VimeoFacebookTwitterGoogleLinked InHighlightAdminApplicationsDetailsDevice SetupFunctionalityGetting StartedStatusTroubleshootingVideoToursReportingquip

Help & Support November 2024

Setting up Cisco NBAR in Highlight

Overview

NBAR is a smart technology available in Cisco devices to analyse network traffic. It can determine which applications are present and how much bandwidth they are using.

NBAR comes pre-installed with most versions of Cisco software from 12.2 onwards, so is likely to already be available in your switches or routers. Read Cisco's own overview.

NBAR is a key component of Cisco’s technology strategy, and is the basis for a number of processes such as classifying traffic for applying Class-Of-Service (CoS) rules, filtering, etc.

Highlight can collect NBAR statistics periodically using SNMP and report on the applications present on a given circuit, as in this example:

Traffic Analysis NBAR chart

NBAR is a powerful technology, similar to Flow in some respects, better at recognising different applications although ignoring the "Who sent it?" (addressing) aspects of network traffic that Flow picks up. Find out more about the differences between NBAR and Flow.