Need to Understand Traffic Flow? A Primer for the Uninitiated

Flow is an excellent way for network engineers to analyze traffic. Simply put, traffic flow can be best defined as a way to measure traffic that has similar packets. To identify a packet as a certain type of flow, there is data that can be analyzed to separate them into specified categories. As an example, packets may have protocols and particular ports in common, among other attributes.

In this way, a network engineer is able to monitor a flow by separating out traffic to determine particular flows that may be problematic. What many do not realize is that this technology is available to you on your network, and you may not be using it correctly or at all if you don’t have the right tools implemented.

Why would a flow be problematic? Perhaps you are experiencing latency issues on your network, or are thinking about adding new equipment to your system. Using flow analysis may help you to determine what to do before you attempt to troubleshoot other areas. This can ultimately help you save money on network expansion when it’s not necessary.

When it comes to flow, you’re going to hear about a lot of different standards. This is mainly because several manufacturers have there own version. A large amount of vendors use NetFlow, which was developed by Cisco; Juniper Networks has J-Flow and sFlow, which is used by Nortel as well as HP among other vendors. Also, there is IPFIX which is an attempt to standardize some of the fragmentation that has occurred in this space.

The main thing to keep in mind when evaluating traffic is that while these different variations of flow have some nuances that differentiate them they still have some key elements in common. One of them is that they all use the UDP transport protocol. This enables you to configure the ports on the server-side. In addition, they are usually easy to configure, some through SNMP or via free flow configurator software.

This is just a brief overview to get you acclimated with flow technology. If you are interested in learning more, check out the Geek’s Guide to NetFlow for some great tips and best practices. Plus, find out the top five reasons to use flow technology for monitoring your network.

Also, you can get a free trial of one of the top NetFlow analyzers. Try it out see how easy a web-based tool can be when working with flow analysis.