ntop: Don't bother with CentOS 6 (or ntop)

Well I recently needed to look at alternative Netflow collectors of the free variety as our Fluke netflow collector has ridiculous license limitations.

I hadn't looked at ntop for a while and, well, I'll save you some time: Don't bother.

It hasn't improved in a long time.

The simple fact of the matter is nothing even touches Manage Engine Netflow Analyzer.

Now just something I noticed in my travels attempting to get ntop running on good old CentOS 64: It's virtually impossible to upgrade PERL on this distro.

Following one of the many guides out there such as:

http://cavepopo.hd.free.fr/wordpress/network/ntop-install-on-rhelcentos-6/

http://www.mikrotik-routeros.com/2012/03/installing-ntop-on-centos-6redhat-with-netflow-mikrotik-traffic-flow/

or

http://ryanwoon.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/install-ntop-in-centos-6/

resulted in the same errors message:
Please install python 2.6 or newer.


So I upgraded python to 3.3 using a variety of methods (yum install as well as wget / compile / tar / make / make install) and it simply won't upgrade.

Long story short, it just works on Ubuntu Server Edition.

And after ALL that you're greeted with one of the most lack lustre traffic monitoring platforms you've seen in a long time.

Oh well - hope I saved you some time :)