1 .\" netsniff-ng - the packet sniffing beast
2 .\" Copyright 2013 Daniel Borkmann.
3 .\" Subject to the GPL, version 2.
4 .TH FLOWTOP 8 "03 March 2013" "Linux" "netsniff-ng toolkit"
6 flowtop \- top-like netfilter TCP/UDP/SCTP/DCCP/ICMP(v6) flow tracking
10 \fBflowtop\fR { [\fIoptions\fR] }
14 flowtop is a top-like connection tracking tool that can run on an end host or
15 small home router. It is able to present TCP, UDP/UDP-lite, SCTP, DCCP, and
16 ICMP(v6) flows that have been collected by the kernel's netfilter connection
17 tracking framework, thus no packet capturing in user space needs to be done.
19 flowtop is able to give you a quick overview of current connections on your
20 local system, e.g. for debugging purposes or to answer questions like:
22 * If you access website X, what other connections are being opened in
23 the background that I'm not aware of?
24 * What connections are active that pass one's router?
25 * I have this proprietary binary Y, to where does it connect?
26 * To which countries am I sending data?
27 * Are there any suspicious background connections on my machine?
28 * How many active connections does binary Y have?
29 * How long are connections active already?
30 * At which rate am I sending/receiving data?
32 The following information will be presented in flowtop's output:
34 * Application name and PID when run on local machine
35 * Reverse DNS for source and destination
36 * Geo-location information (country, city)
37 * Used protocols (IPv4, IPv6, TCP, UDP, SCTP, ICMP, ...)
38 * Flow port's service name heuristic
39 * Transport protocol state machine information
40 * Byte/packet counters (if they are enabled)
41 * Connection duration (if timestamping is enabled)
42 * Flow send/receive rate (if byte/packet counters are enabled)
44 In order for flowtop to work, netfilter must be active and running
45 on your machine, thus kernel-side connection tracking is active. If netfilter
46 is not running, you can activate it with iptables(8):
49 iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
51 iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
54 or by loading the following kernel modules:
57 modprobe nf_conntrack_ipv4
59 modprobe nf_conntrack_ipv6
62 To dump byte/packet counters flowtop enables the sysctl(8) parameter
63 \[lq]net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_acct\[rq] via:
66 echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_acct
69 and resets it to the previously set value on exit. These counters will only be
70 active on connections which were created after accounting was enabled. Thus, to
71 have these counters be active all the time the parameter should be enabled after
72 the system is up. To automatically enable it, sysctl.conf(8) or sysctl.d(8)
75 To calculate the connection duration flowtop enables the sysctl(8) parameter
76 \[lq]net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_timestamp\[rq] via:
79 echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_timestamp
82 and resets it to the previously set value on exit.
84 flowtop's intention is just to get a quick look over your active connections.
85 If you want logging support, have a look at netfilter's conntrack(8) tools
91 Display IPv4 flows. That is the default when flowtop is started without
95 Display IPv6 flows. That is the default when flowtop is started without
99 Display TCP flows. That is the default when flowtop is started without
103 Display UDP and UDP-lite flows.
109 Display ICMP version 4 and version 6 flows.
115 Don't perform hostname lookup. Only numeric addresses will be shown for flow
119 Don't perform GeoIP lookup. No geographical information will be shown for flow
123 Also show source information of the flow, not only destination information.
126 Show flow rates in bits per second instead of bytes per second.
129 The built-in database update mechanism will be invoked to get Maxmind's
130 latest database. To configure search locations for databases, the file
131 /etc/netsniff-ng/geoip.conf contains possible addresses. Thus, to save
132 bandwidth or for mirroring Maxmind's databases (to bypass their traffic
133 limit policy), different hosts or IP addresses can be placed into geoip.conf,
134 separated by a newline.
136 .SS -t <time>, --interval <time>
137 Flow info refresh interval in seconds, default is 1s.
140 Show version information and exit.
143 Show user help and exit.
148 Default ncurses output for flowtop that tracks IPv4, IPv6 flows for TCP.
150 .SS flowtop -46UTDISs
151 This example enables the maximum display options for flowtop.
155 Files under /etc/netsniff-ng/ can be modified to extend flowtop's
156 service resolution and lookup information.
158 * tcp.conf - TCP port/services map
159 * udp.conf - UDP port/services map
160 * geoip.conf - GeoIP database mirrors
163 With a fairly high rate of connection tracking updates, flowtop can become
164 unresponsive for short periods of time while scrolling. The right fix would
165 be to replace flowtop's connection management backend with a better design
166 with respect to the locking approach. This is still on the "todo" list.
169 flowtop is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2.0.
173 was originally written for the netsniff-ng toolkit by Daniel Borkmann. It
174 is currently maintained by Tobias Klauser <tklauser@distanz.ch> and Daniel
175 Borkmann <dborkma@tik.ee.ethz.ch>.
183 .BR astraceroute (8),
191 Manpage was written by Daniel Borkmann.
194 This page is part of the Linux netsniff-ng toolkit project. A description of the project,
195 and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://netsniff-ng.org/.