NetFlow as a network monitoring and statics technology is not new. To make it work, you need to sample the network and generate NetFlow records, which are sent to a NetFlow collector software application for analysis. NetFlow has been widely adopted and many organisations have invested time and money in learning how to use NetFlow tools to help their network operations teams understand how their network is performing and what is creating fluctuations in traffic.
Back in the day, you’d have your routers and switches generating these records at pre-defined sampling rates, but as network performance continues to scale to 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE), 40GbE and even 100GbE connections, then on-board sampling by the network infrastructure devices begins to create overhead – particularly when the sampling rate needs to increase to create a higher resolution statistical summary of what’s going on. Add that to the fact that an increasing number of high-end network infrastructure devices do not even support NetFlow as a standard, we’re seeing an increasing need to find alternate ways of generating NetFlow records in today’s high speed data centre network links.
Enter the NetFlow Generator – a dedicated device that has the performance needed to monitor traffic on links and provide NetFlow records, high speed sampled or even un-sampled (i.e. generating a complete description rather than a statistical model), of the network traffic flows. Our EndaceFlowTM 3040 NetFlow Generator Appliance (NGA) delivers 100 percent accurate NetFlow generation. We think it’s a fantastic solution and so did Network Computing who recently reviewed it and found “It’s clearly capable of handling very high traffic loads and during testing we found it remarkably easy to deploy and manage.”
NetFlow generators such as our EndaceFlow 3040, help organisations gain operational insight into their high capacity networks, allowing them keep their business working 24/7. Learn more about our NetFlow generators here.