It’s common to need UDP forwarding to replicate UDP packets to all of your network monitoring solutions. Being the developers of NetFlow analysis software we have UDP NetFlow replication sending NetFlow packets to multiple development and production servers. This can be a challenge as most NetFlow exporters only send NetFlow packets to two different destinations. As a result of this, we are now selling an all in one UDP replicator appliance with a web based interface that can be configured from anywhere.
What is a UDP Replicator?
UDP forwarding or UDP replication is, typically, used when you are limited to the amount of destinations that you can export data to. The solution is to send data such as NetFlow, syslogs, or any UDP protocol to a UDP replicator which can be configured to forward the data to any number of destinations.
Here’s an example of how we use a NetFlow replicator appliance on our own network to forward NetFlow data to all of our network monitoring solutions:
Since our high volume NetFlow Forwarder can easily forward over 100,000 flows a second it’s a great tool to provide distributed NetFlow collection. For example, you can send all the NetFlow packets to the UDP Replicator and then configure the Replicator to distribute the NetFlow to multiple collectors, so that all the data is not going to one single collection point. You can also setup the UDP Replicator for disaster recovery by sending the same flows to two different NetFlow collector servers.
Here’s an example of our UDP Replicator in action as it dynamically detects if it should stop forwarding flows when a host goes offline to prevent the flood of UDP packets across the network. Then, when the host comes back online, the Replicator will begin forwarding flows again.
May 2016 Update: UDP Forwarder or UDP Fanout
Learn more about Plixer Replicator here.
