A NetFlow collector that can scan is important for many of our larger customers. Nearly 500 of our customers are collecting Cisco NetFlow and/or sFlow from over 100 devices. We understand that a NetFlow analyzer solution that can scale is important.

Scrutinizer Scales
I was working with a government customer last week. Check out the vitals on his Scrutinizer, which is receiving NetFlow from 440 routers with a combined 1736 interfaces. You might be surprise how often I see a huge volume of routers and a fairly light aggregate NetFlow volume. As you can see, Scrutinizer was chugging right along.

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I just received an email from someone in Europe asking a question that I thought Riverbed and Scrutinizer NetFlow customers might be interested in.

QUESTION: I’ve just read the message you posted a few months ago concerning an overstating problem with the NetFlow feature on a Riverbed appliance. I’m currently working with NetFlow data sent by a Riverbed appliance, and I think that I have to deal with the same problem you encountered.  What do I do?

ANSWER: Yes, overstating utilization with the Riverbed gear is a problem using Cisco NetFlow v5 because outbound utilization is calculated using inbound traffic from the other interfaces. Because of this, compression that occurs is not considered and overstated utilization is the result.

I have escalated this issue to Riverbed and pointed out that the solution is to export Cisco NetFlow v9 with Egress flows.  NetFlow v5 only supports ingress flows. Although with the right configuration, Scrutinizer v6 supports Cisco NetFlow v9 with egress flows, we have made enhancements in Scrutinizer v7.  I have not heard anything from Riverbed regarding this issue and the need to support NetFlow v9, like the Cisco WAAS solution. I think we can be confident that that a company like Riverbed that is supporting some of the largest networks in the world must be thinking about NetFlow v9 with egress support.

NOTE: I believe Riverbed has a proprietary solution to this problem that you can buy. If you contact Riverbed and they share with you their plans, can you please  let me know?