Operations Skills

Skill 97 of 129

AWS Network Monitoring

Installs, configures, and troubleshoots Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2 instances to monitor network path health.

1 minute · 283 words · 5 sections

Install

$ npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill aws-network-monitoring

$ npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws

» /plugin marketplace add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Overview

Domain expertise for installing and configuring Amazon CloudWatch Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2 instances. Covers IAM permission setup, agent installation via SSM Distributor or command-line install, agent activation, verification, and troubleshooting.

Network Flow Monitor agents are lightweight software that publish performance metrics (latency, packet loss) to the Network Flow Monitor backend, enabling monitoring of network path health between workloads.

Works best with the AWS MCP server (opens in a new tab) — enables running SSM commands, attaching IAM policies, and validating agent status directly. All guidance also works with standard AWS CLI access.

Routing

User need	Action
Installing Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2	Read agent-install-ec2.md (opens in a new tab)
Configuring IAM for Network Flow Monitor agents	Read agent-permissions.md (opens in a new tab)
Troubleshooting Network Flow Monitor agents (403, no metrics, connectivity)	Read troubleshooting.md (opens in a new tab)
Spans multiple areas	Read the most specific reference first, then consult others as needed

Files

File	Content
agent-install-ec2.md (opens in a new tab)	End-to-end Network Flow Monitor agent installation via SSM Distributor, activation, verification
agent-permissions.md (opens in a new tab)	IAM policy setup for Network Flow Monitor agent metric publishing
troubleshooting.md (opens in a new tab)	Error → cause → fix for Network Flow Monitor agent issues (HTTP 403, missing metrics, connectivity)

Supported versions

For supported Linux distributions, kernel versions, and architectures, see the AWS documentation (opens in a new tab). Windows is not supported.

Security Considerations

Least-privilege IAM: Attach only CloudWatchNetworkFlowMonitorAgentPublishPolicy for publishing metrics and AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore for SSM management. Do not use *FullAccess policies.
Private subnets: When the instance is in a private subnet, prefer VPC endpoints for SSM (com.amazonaws.<region>.ssm, .ssmmessages, .ec2messages) over a NAT gateway to keep traffic on the AWS network.
Credential storage: Never embed AWS credentials on the instance; the publish policy MUST be attached to the instance role, not configured as static keys.
Audit trail: Ensure CloudTrail is enabled in the account so SSM SendCommand invocations and IAM AttachRolePolicy actions performed during agent setup are logged for security investigations.
References: CloudWatch Network Flow Monitor security (opens in a new tab), IAM best practices (opens in a new tab)

About this skill

Trigger

Installs, configures, and troubleshoots Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2 instances to monitor network path health. Covers agent installation, IAM permissions, monitoring network paths, and troubleshooting agents reporting no metrics, HTTP 403 errors, or connectivity failures.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws, branch main, last pushed 22 September 2026.

Licence

Apache-2.0 — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

129 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 19 distinct layouts observed: plugins/aws-agents-for-devsecops/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/aws-agents/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/aws-core/skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/core-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/analytics-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/database-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/ec2-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/end-user-computing-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/messaging-and-streaming-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/migration-and-modernization-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/networking-and-content-delivery-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/operations-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/quantum-computing-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/resilience-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/security-and-identity-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/serverless-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/storage-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/system-table-skills/*/SKILL.md, skills/specialized-skills/web-and-mobile-development/*/SKILL.md.

Duplicates collapsed

34 mirror copies folded into their canonical skill — republished for Alternate. Copies match on content hash and on position once a leading per-agent prefix is stripped, because the same skill is routinely shipped under a dozen agent directories with a dozen different hashes.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 65°, chroma 0.174. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “AWS Network Monitoring”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Amazon Web Services, declaring 4 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Overview

Routing

User need	Action
Installing Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2	Read agent-install-ec2.md (opens in a new tab)
Configuring IAM for Network Flow Monitor agents	Read agent-permissions.md (opens in a new tab)
Troubleshooting Network Flow Monitor agents (403, no metrics, connectivity)	Read troubleshooting.md (opens in a new tab)
Spans multiple areas	Read the most specific reference first, then consult others as needed

Files

File	Content
agent-install-ec2.md (opens in a new tab)	End-to-end Network Flow Monitor agent installation via SSM Distributor, activation, verification
agent-permissions.md (opens in a new tab)	IAM policy setup for Network Flow Monitor agent metric publishing
troubleshooting.md (opens in a new tab)	Error → cause → fix for Network Flow Monitor agent issues (HTTP 403, missing metrics, connectivity)

Supported versions

For supported Linux distributions, kernel versions, and architectures, see the AWS documentation (opens in a new tab). Windows is not supported.

Security Considerations

Least-privilege IAM: Attach only CloudWatchNetworkFlowMonitorAgentPublishPolicy for publishing metrics and AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore for SSM management. Do not use *FullAccess policies.
Private subnets: When the instance is in a private subnet, prefer VPC endpoints for SSM (com.amazonaws.<region>.ssm, .ssmmessages, .ec2messages) over a NAT gateway to keep traffic on the AWS network.
Credential storage: Never embed AWS credentials on the instance; the publish policy MUST be attached to the instance role, not configured as static keys.
Audit trail: Ensure CloudTrail is enabled in the account so SSM SendCommand invocations and IAM AttachRolePolicy actions performed during agent setup are logged for security investigations.
References: CloudWatch Network Flow Monitor security (opens in a new tab), IAM best practices (opens in a new tab)

AWS Network Monitoring

Overview

Routing

Files

Supported versions

Security Considerations

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

AWS Network Monitoring

Overview

Routing

Files

Supported versions

Security Considerations

Appendix 97.1–97.3

ReferencesMarkdown · 3 files

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Appendix 97.1–97.3

ReferencesMarkdown · 3 files