Cisco 4500 NetFlow support is available if you add the WS-F4531 card which is supported on SUPERVISORs IV and V. If you are fortunate enough to have the supervisor V-10GE, the traditional Netflow functions are built-in which means you don’t need to add the Netflow service card. Also, the more recent SUP-7(E or LE) & 4500X support Flexible Netflow without the service card.
What I would like to know is if this Catalyst is ever going to support:
- Performance Monitoring (PfM): a technology where Flexible NetFlow (FnF) can be used to export performance information on flows. Metrics include jitter, Packet Loss, latency and more. This architecture is also referred to as Medianet NetFlow.
- Performance Routing (PfR): a technology where FnF is used to export details on the quality of links when flows need to be rerouted to maintain service levels.
- Performance Agent (PfA): a technology where FnF is used in WAN architectures and exports metrics related to client, server and application delay.
- NBAR2: a technology where FnF is used to tell the router to perform deep packet inspection to determine the actual application running on a particular port (e.g. TCP port 80). Is it facebook.com, Citrix, Webex or skype? This is a very handy technology.
The above puts little additional overhead on the hardware and is very useful when trying to gain insight into VoIP, monitoring cloud services or even BYOD traffic. These are key abilities for next generation network traffic analysis tools.