Such a dilemma, when it comes to Autonomous System NetFlow exports, which do you prefer: peer-as or origin-as?  If you don’t care about Autonomous System reports, you still just might find this post interesting.  I’ll try to keep you captivated!

Autonomous System
First of all, what is an Autonomous System? Within the Internet, an Autonomous System (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators that presents a common, clearly defined routing policy to the Internet. A single ISP can support multiple Autonomous Systems Numbers (ASN). The ASNs supported by the ISP are advertised via their Internet router using the BGP Protocol. So what is BGP?

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Jon Mills
Marketing & Public Relations Manager
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This is part 3 of a 3 part series.  Part 1 and part 2 covered other topics.  In the third NetFlow lab we studied the traffic from a VoIP connection.   

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Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager

You’re in the market for a NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.  What are the key features that you’re looking for?  What makes one NetFlow analyzer stand out from the rest?  Do you have a list of “must haves”?

Such as support for Flexible NetFlow, IPFIX reporting, portable network maps?  How about automated NetFlow configuration on your routers and switches?  Is customization of the web interface important to you?  Multiple language support critical?
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I was talking with our newly appointed Pre-Sales Support Specialist, Scott, the other day when we realized that we don’t have a NetFlow Glossary blog, so I wanted to take this opportunity to consolidate some resources and highlight some of the key NetFlow terminology that we find ourselves talking about on a daily basis.

NetFlow Terminology:

Bidirectional Flows
Flexible NetFlow
Ingress vs. Egress
Interface 0
ip-flow timeout active 1
IPFIX
ip route-cache flow vs. ip flow ingress
NBAR
NetFlow Collector and Analyzer
NetFlow Exporters
NetFlow Options Templates
NetFlow Probe
NetFlow Replicator
NetFlow v5 vs. v9
NSEL
sFlow

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Paul Dube
Technical Support
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For most of the last year I have been working as a member of the  Technical Support Team here at Plixer International. But as of July 1st, I have moved from Technical Support to a Pre-Sales Support role on the Sales Team. In my new role I will be responsible for providing technical support for all pre-sales/evaluating customers.

I just want to say that it has been a pleasure working with the many customers that I’ve talked to over the last year. I wish you all much success in your Network Admin/IT endeavors.

If you are new to the NetFlow technology, I would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of using NetFlow and our network analysis tool to open windows into what is going on over your network. The following information is made available via the flow packets: source IP address, destination IP address, source port number, destination port number, protocol type, type of services, and the router input interface.

Exporting flows to a NetFlow collector provides a deeper level of detail that was up to this point unavailable in network management. This type of information has proven invaluable in detecting worms, port scans, DDoS attacks, and other security threats and network misuse.

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Okay, back to the basics. We’ve been working with Cisco NetFlow technology for many years now, but what is NetFlow?

NetFlow is a traffic profile monitoring technology developed by Darren Kerr and Barry Bruins at Cisco Systems, back in 1996. At that time, network monitoring mostly consisted of seeing how much traffic was traversing your network, but did not include what that traffic was.
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We are still recovering from CiscoLIVE 2010.  We have lots of leads to pour through as well as a few new potential business partners to work with. One of our long distance partners dropped by our booth to say ‘hello’ and discuss Scrutinizer v8.

We work with the Cisco Japan team from time to time regarding NBAR and Flexible NetFlow .  Here I am standing with the Manager of Solutions Systems Engineering and a Senior Systems Engineer.  Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager

At the support desk we often get asked questions about NetFlow technology and what, if any, performance impact enabling NetFlow will have on their routers or switches.

Cisco® NetFlow technology is an embedded feature within Cisco IOS routers and high end switches. NetFlow data records consist of information about source and destination addresses, along with the protocols and ports used in the end-to-end conversation. The NetFlow feature set allows for the tracking of individual IP flows as they are received at a Cisco router or switching device.

Network administrators can use the NetFlow flow records for a variety of purposes, including accounting, billing, network planning, traffic engineering and user or application monitoring.

Many customers who are new to NetFlow are naturally cautious about introducing it into their network. They need to understand the potential performance impact of enabling NetFlow before they are willing to deploy it. Cisco has released a NetFlow Performance Analysis paper that examines the CPU impact of enabling NetFlow services in various scenarios on several different Cisco hardware platforms.

Before you get too concerned about what the report is showing, look at those flow numbers. They represent a ”worst-case scenario” in terms of the traffic flows seen by the routers, and the results must be viewed in that context.

Now that you have decided to enable NetFlow on your routers and switching devices, it’s time to put that flow data to work for you.

Let us show you how our NetFlow and sFlow Analysis Tool provides the best custom reporting engine on the market today, supporting leading edge technologies like Cisco ASA, Flexible NetFlow, IPFIX, and NBAR.

Give me a call – (207)324-8805

-Scott

My daughter recently started a temporary Marketing position here at Plixer. And as with most people when they get their first job, she was very nervous about the new environment she would be coming into.

Adding to her nervous tension was the opportunity to see and meet Mix Master Mitch in person.

While I would not lump her in with the usual NetFlow maniacs that follow Mitch from town to town, I am sure she was aware of his superstar status and had seen the Mix Master’s videos (who hasn’t?). For the first few days, she would try to avoid the famous artist for fear of embarrassment. It wasn’t until Mitch left an autographed 8×10 on her desk that she finally was able to relax around the Rap legend.

Don’t miss your chance to see Mitch and his NetFlow posse live as the tour heads out to sunny Las Vegas next week for Cisco Live!

Stop by the Plixer booth and let the team show you how our NetFlow and sFlow Analysis Tool provides the best custom reporting engine on the market today, supporting leading edge techologies like Cisco ASA, Flexible NetFlow, IPFIX, and NBAR.

Put our network monitoring and analysis tools to work for you today.

Give us a call – (207) 324-8805

-Scott

Why do you want to know what is going on in the traffic flow of a network?

What’s the point?

Why doesn’t utilization alone cut it?

Network Administrators don’t typically have a lot of time on a day-to-day basis. There is always some fire to fight, some network or user issue that comes up. Most times your juggling more than one issue at a time. So you find yourself spending most of your time trying to keep the network running and the users happy.

A Network Administrator’s abilities are only as good as his awareness of what happens on his network.

Monitoring and maintaining your network traffic and bandwidth utilization used to be an overlooked aspect of your job. But evolution of technology has changed the makeup of networks everywhere and has forced network managers to include Flow analysis and monitoring in their network management strategies.

Network Flow Analysis is the art of studying the traffic on a computer network. It is the  industry-standard method of collecting and recording network traffic. Flow analysis lets you see what types of traffic passed between hosts, without having to reproduce the problem.

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