Overview

What it is

Network Administration Visualized is an advanced software suite to monitor large computer networks. It automatically discovers network topology, monitors network load and outages, and can send alerts on network events by e-mail and SMS, allowing for flexible configuration of alert profiles.

What NAV does

NAV gives you:

  • An overview of your deployed network infrastructure inventory, topology and address space allocation/utilization.

  • Alerts via e-mail, Slack and/or SMS when stuff stops working.

  • Traffic, CPU load and environmental sensor statistics.

  • The ability to find the access port of any client machine in your network.

  • The ability to block or quarantine access ports of network abusers.

  • The ability to perform simple access port configuration tasks via web, and also to delegate this access to other administrators within your organizational hierarchy.

Although NAV specializes in network infrastructure monitoring, it also provides simple service monitoring for those who have less complex service monitoring needs.

A brief history of NAV

The first version of Network Administration Visualized was written by the IT department of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 1999 to cover their network monitoring needs, after HP OpenView had failed to meet their requirements. At the time, NTNU’s campus network had some 20,000 users.

Uninett, the Norwegian National Research and Education Network became interested in NTNU’s work on NAV in 2001 and began sponsoring 50% of its development costs in exchange for licensing the software to all universities and university colleges in Norway.

In 2004, both parties agreed to release NAV to the world under the GPL license, effectively freeing the software.

In 2006, Uninett assumed the main responsibility of maintaining and developing the software further, and is continually doing so on behalf of its customers, the Norwegian universities and university colleges, and research network partners.

On January 1st 2022, Uninett, NSD and Unit (all entities owned by the Norwegian government) were merged into the new governmental agency Sikt - Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research.