Cisco NetFlow

Cisco NetFlow is an analysis system of a flow of the signal data generated by the equipment Cisco. Some kind of "phone bill for network traffic" becomes result of such analysis. Thanks to the detailed account you control the telephone expenses, and network administrators, using the analysis of NetFlow, can control completely behavior of traffic in network.

Systems using the analysis of NetFlow detect suspicious actions in network, protect information, offer means for liquidation of external and internal threats.

With introduction of Flexible NetFlow thanks to variation or flexible fields the additional information about the application became available. It significantly reduces a gap with package tools and allows to reduce costs for network management and also gives an opportunity to the network manager quickly to optimize and improve network for support of key business applications.

It is known that the NetFlow protocol provides good understanding of the traffic passing on network, in particular, from whom to whom data are transferred and as network transmission capacity is used. These are useful and necessary data, but they do not provide all information necessary for the manager of network to improve or even to optimize network for the applications using it. Therefore we should address such technologies as deep inspection of packets to eliminate this space.

With introduction of Flexible NetFlow thanks to variation or flexible fields the additional information about the application became available. It significantly reduces a gap with package tools and allows to reduce costs for network management and also gives an opportunity to the network manager quickly to optimize and improve network for support of key business applications. Examples and benefits of use of NetFlow.

During the last action of Cisco Live 2011 the SevOne company initiated holding a visiting session "Use of Cisco Flexible NetFlow for performance improvement of applications and network" with participation of Vess Bakalov, CTO SevOne and some big customers of SevOne.

ACS (the company as a part of Xerox Company) uses NetFlow both in own network, and for their "cloud", managing business of service provider for more than 200 clients:

• Expansion of search capabilities and fault recovery – studying of surges in capacity in client network,
• Traffic management – understanding and optimization of use of network for key client applications,
• Accounting of use of network resources - the diversity/cost accounting for client networks and remote platforms.

Benefits, the received ACS from use their solutions on the basis of NetFlow:

• Detection of the unauthorized traffic leading to resolutions times
• Performance improvement of key client business applications,
• Accounting of consumption by remote platforms and clients of capacity which allows to plan better load distribution and to predict costs,
• Identification of deviations when routing for fast recovery and reduction of requirements to capacity,
• Understanding and cost control on the Internet.

NetFlow use by Hawaiian Telcom company was caused by a possibility of profit earning from tracking and understanding of traffic of their clients and includes:

• Network planning – when and where to provide conditions for growth of services (boundary routers and regiments of access);
• Reports on use by clients of resources of network – trend reports of traffic on lines the client – the boundary router, a source and content types;
• Detection and fault recovery – connects loading and use of data and reduces time for isolation of idikant.

The main benefits received by Hawaiian from their implementation by NetFlow:

• Growth of revenue due to identification of resource consumption by clients instead of the plans allowing teams of sellers to sell or prioritize customer move;
• Reduction of time for detection and fault recovery by providing to relevant information of traffic of end consumers and DSLAM of data from the point of view of integrated network performance;
• Improvement of control over costs thanks to understanding where and how many traffic moves from sources in ASN/CDN of the top level to consumers.