Requesting: FirePlotter In Our FortiGates

[#1]

Hello All, Specially Fortinet Employees; I am using the Fortigates for quite a while now and since the latest builds i' m missing some features on the Fortigate which are availble in other vendor' s products. (Fortinet is being compared by watchguard for example, and i must say: Fortinet, watch out for them!) What i would like to ask to you Fortinet: please create something like ' FirePlotter' in the fortigate... We need some connection control, not the session widget-thingie, that is not workable for daily jobs... * So, people, what do you think? do we want something like this in our fortigates? - I say YES!!! I mean: why is such a company building this tool? yes: fortinet does not have this... and this feature is very usefull...please let me know your thoughts regarding this? Thanks!

[#2]

Marcel, i agree. In fact there are more companies which are making external applications to get more info out of the Fortinet Boxes. For Example.. http://www.wavecrest.net/products/cyfin/reporter/compatibility/fortigate.html#cyfininstall It would be very nice if Fortinet takes a look a Fireplotter for example, and build their own tool. Dave

[abelio]

Well, i don' t completely agree with the arguments provided: - you' re talking about paying extra software to install in another computer to see what you want to see; 250 usd/yr average for fireplotter , 1000usd/yr average for cyfin (user number dependant) - watchguard relies in extra propietary software to manage medium/big size boxes and see all the whistles and bells that Marcel mentioned; software installed in a box you need to keep an eye on it, because sometimes different firmware versions requires different management software version you have to track, etc; - similar things for another vendor, like junipers, you need to install an extra software on an external pc to enhance visibility about what' s going on. Anyway, is your call to pay external companies scripting work. FortiOS 4.2 is providing more new interesting features to enhance traffic visibility. not only " widget-thingie" as you said: -widgets are a step ahead, bandwidth per IP/user, etc -there' s now sflow support, etc I think that is a good tendency. Add all the things you can get from the unit using SNMP with free software and you would not have to feel so lacking of tools. regards

[Paul_Dean]

It' s been along time since I used Watchguardsbut don' t they still have their control panel software which allows you to see real time traffic?

ORIGINAL: abelio - watchguard relies in extra propietary software to manage medium/big size boxes and see all the whistles and bells that Marcel mentioned; software installed in a box you need to keep an eye on it, because sometimes different firmware versions requires different management software version you have to track, etc;

[abelio]

ORIGINAL: Paul Dean It' s been along time since I used Watchguardsbut don' t they still have their control panel software which allows you to see real time traffic?

Well, yes you' re right: that tool actually is a two columns screen when you can see realtime traffic from-to with colored lines; useful to catch quickly a hog or traffic burst against a particular host, but nothing fancier than a dashboard widget. regards

[damiri]

still helps me to finish my work 3x faster :)

[SECCON1MC]

We are another in the mix that offer a complete view of all active connections (Guardian Realtime Session Monitor with our FortiSIEM product). Unlike some other other we offer real time grouping and graphing of the sessions by src, dst, proto, policy id, and port number. How do we and all others do it? Via the command

diag sys session list

As the manufacture of one of those " other applications" , I created FortiSIEM to allow for the unification of features in fireplot, fortianalyzer, fortimanager along with a very deep reporting interface and AI to help you along with what is important - all from a SaaS based system.

[billp]

Obviously, the more value that Fortinet can add to the product, the better it can sell and compete. I would hope/think that basic tools to see traffic in real time would be available. Ideally, this would be a part of the FortiAnalyzer package. Fireplotter is a great tool and I doubt they would part with it inexpensively. My impression is that Fortinet is in catch-up mode at the moment -- FortiOS 4 MR 2 certain feels that way at least -- so perhaps this is coming eventually as market forces come to bear. Would also love better reporting capabilities from the FortiAnalyzer, but that' s a different post.

[#9]

Thanks guys, The fact that others are building such tools and ways to get this visible says enough i think for fortinet to build something that gives us more insight. Also, i must agree with the statement that fortinet is catching up...so, hurry up!

[BrianPro]

I know this is old, but I agree having something like a " fireplotter" by fortinet would be awesome (realtime monitoring/traffic). Now built in to the web interface with nice updating, drilling would take it up a notch too!