How To Install Ntopng on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ntopng on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Ntopng is an open-source network traffic monitoring tool that provides real-time network analytics and statistics. It is designed to monitor and analyze network traffic flows, identify network problems, and generate network usage reports. Ntopng is an essential tool for network administrators who want to monitor their network traffic and troubleshoot network issues

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Ntopng monitor network traffic on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for Ntopng.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Ntopng on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Required Dependencies.

Ntopng requires some dependencies to be installed before it can be installed on Debian 11. Use the following command to install the required dependencies:

sudo apt install g++ flex bison libpcap-dev libssl-dev libtool autoconf automake make pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libmaxminddb-dev libsqlite3-dev libhiredis-dev libxml2-dev libgeoip-dev libtool-bin dh-autoreconf cmake

Step 3. Installing Ntopng on Debian 11.

By default, Ntopng is available on the Debian 11 base repository. So, now run the following command below to install the latest version of the Ntopng package to your Debian system:

sudo apt install ntopng

After the installation is completed, start the Ntopng service using the following command:

sudo systemctl enable ntopng
sudo systemctl start ntopng

Step 4. Configure Ntopng on Debian.

You can configure Ntopng using the Ntopng configuration file located at /etc/ntopng/ntopng.conf. To edit the Ntopng configuration file, use the following command:

nano /etc/ntopng/ntopng.conf

You can change the configuration options according to your requirements. Some of the important configuration options that you may want to change are:

• -i option specifies the network interface that Ntopng should listen to. You can change it to the interface that you want to monitor.
• -w option specifies the directory where Ntopng stores its data. You can change it to the directory of your choice.
• -F option enables or disables the flow exporter module.

After making the changes, save the file and restart the Ntopng service using the following command:

sudo systemctl restart ntopng

Step 5. Configuring UFW Firewall for Ntopng.

First, we need to open port 3000 for Ntopng to allow incoming traffic. Run the following command to open port 3000:

sudo ufw allow 3000/tcp

Verify that the port has been opened, run the following command:

sudo ufw status

Output:

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
3000/tcp                   ALLOW       Anywhere

Step 3. Accessing Ntopng on Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, now open your web browser and write the URL http://your-IP-address:3000 and you will be redirected to the Ntopng login page:

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Ntopng. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Ntopng network traffic monitoring on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Ntopng website.