nfsen-ng

nfsen-ng is a modern, in-place replacement for the ageing NfSen web frontend. It sits on top of the existing nfdump tools and adds real-time SSE push, a responsive UI, and support for RRD or VictoriaMetrics as the storage backend.

Requires Linux. The backend runs on the OpenSwoole PHP extension, which has no maintained FreeBSD/other-BSD port — see openswoole/ext-openswoole#233. Docker images are Linux-only.

Sankey traffic-flow diagram with the optional destination-port column, available since v1.0.0-beta.1.

Quick start

No clone needed — just grab the compose file and go:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbolli/nfsen-ng/master/deploy/docker-compose.yml

# Edit NFSEN_SOURCES, NFSEN_NFDUMP_PROFILES, and other env vars in docker-compose.yml, then:

# Production with bundled Caddy (auto-HTTPS, ports 80/443)
docker compose --profile proxy up -d

# Production behind your own reverse proxy (app on port 9000 only)
docker compose up -d

The app image is published on GHCR: ghcr.io/mbolli/nfsen-ng. The bundled-Caddy profile uses the stock caddy:latest image — no custom build needed, since php-via serves and Brotli-compresses static assets itself. :latest tracks the newest release, betas included while pre-1.0; :edge always tracks the newest master build; or pin an explicit version tag from Releases for a fixed image.

Development (source mounted, auto-reload on file change):

git clone https://github.com/mbolli/nfsen-ng
cd nfsen-ng
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.dev.yml up -d

Set NFSEN_SOURCES, NFSEN_NFDUMP_PROFILES, and other options as environment variables in your compose file. See Installation and Configuration in the book for the full guide.

Documentation

The full user guide and developer reference now live in the nfsen-ng book — installation, configuration, every tab's feature docs, and the architecture/signals/SSE internals for contributors.

Migrating from the old v0.x NfSen-style release? See the upgrade guide in the book.