Magic Network Monitoring is now free for all Enterprise users
Cloudflare is making its network flow monitoring product, Magic Network Monitoring, available at no cost to all Enterprise Customers. The goal is to give network engineers end-to-end visibility across all traffic flowing through their corporate networks, without the typical operational overhead of configuring data collection, managing storage costs, or juggling multiple visibility tools.
Enterprise Customers can request access through the Magic Network Monitoring product page, and should receive access within 24 hours. Over the next month, the free version will be enabled automatically for all Enterprise Customers by default, with no form required.
How flow data reaches Cloudflare's edge
Magic Network Monitoring accepts network flow data—either NetFlow or sFlow—sent from routers to Cloudflare's network edge. Once received, the data is parsed and turned into immediate analytics on traffic volume in bytes and packets, top protocols, sources, destinations, ports, and TCP flags.
Monitoring traffic that never reaches Cloudflare
The service also covers traffic that doesn’t pass through Cloudflare at all. Consider a network engineer managing IoT devices inside a factory's internal network. That traffic stays on the local network, but engineers still need visibility to track device behavior over time and troubleshoot failures.
In that scenario, a router or network device can be configured to send encrypted traffic flow summaries to Cloudflare over an IPSec tunnel. Magic Network Monitoring parses that data and delivers analytics, letting engineers review historical traffic patterns when an IoT device goes down or a connection is unexpectedly blocked.
Extending visibility into cloud environments
For teams responsible for cloud network operations across multiple public cloud providers, Magic Network Monitoring can ingest traffic flow logs exported from any virtual device supporting NetFlow or sFlow. This provides alerts and analytics for all cloud environments in a single dashboard view.
Cloudflare is also building support for native cloud VPC flow logs, in conjunction with its Magic Cloud Networking offering.
A deployment example from Cloudflare's own network
Cloudflare’s security team used Magic Network Monitoring during the remediation of the Thanksgiving 2023 security incident. The team needed a lightweight way to detect malicious packet characteristics in core data center traffic, monitoring for traffic sourced from or destined to a set of ASNs associated with the bad actor. Visibility into the first core data center was established within 24 hours of project kick-off. Cloudflare continues to use the tool to monitor for traffic related to bad actors, providing real-time analytics on more than 1 Tbps of core data center traffic.
Getting started
Existing Enterprise Customers can begin by visiting the Magic Network Monitoring product page, clicking "Talk to an expert," and submitting the form. After access is granted, the self-serve onboarding process can be completed in under 30 minutes. Interested free-tier users can request access to a limited beta of the service through a separate form.
