How to install ntop

ntop is a network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user’s terminal. It functions as a web server when in Web mode, producing an HTML dump of the network status. To ensure that no bandwidth is overused, it is helpful to keep an eye on how the server is using the network.

Install required dependencies required to install ntop.
# yum install gcc gcc-c++ make libpcap libpcap-devel gdbm-devel libgd-devel libpng-devel libtool libtool-libs rrdtool rrdtool-devel -y

Download ntop from sourceforge & extract it.
# cd /usr/local/src/
# wget wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ntop/ntop/ntop-4.0.1/ntop-4.0.1.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf ntop-4.0.1.tar.gz
# cd ntop-4.0.1

Let’s compile it now.
# ./autogen.sh
# make && make install

You may also get the notice “Please install GeoIP (http://www.maxmind.com/)” while it is being compiled. This indicates that your server is not running GeoIP.

Start configure ntop so that statistics can be viewed/managed from your web browser. Add a user ntop and configure the password. You can then set the password so that nobody else configure it except the one who has login credentials. The default user created is admin.
# useradd -M -s /sbin/nologin -r ntop
# ./ntop -A

Copy the configuration files at desired location and assign correct ownership.
# rsync -va /usr/local/src/ntop-4.0.1/* /usr/local/var/ntop/
# chown ntop:root /usr/local/var/ntop -R

Start service with command below.
# /usr/local/bin/ntop -d -L -u ntop -P /usr/local/var/ntop –skip-version-check –use-syslog=daemon

You can access ntop using a web browser on port 3000. Example is http://10.10.10.1:3000. Here 10.10.10.1 is your server’s public IP address.

Top installation is supported by dedicated server and VPS hosting packages. Get in touch with our friendly support staff, and they will install it for you upon request.