NetFlow-based Traffic Decomposition

NetFlow provides a powerful, flexible and effective way to collect data needed for detailed IP network performance analysis. It can be used for a number of tasks like the following:

  • Monitoring network usage including current and historical data; finding top bandwidth consumers: users, hosts, applications, protocols, etc.
  • Measuring actual traffic; obtaining detailed information about bandwidth utilization by particular hosts, network interfaces, applications, protocols, etc.
  • Tracking network problems and revealing their roots, providing security and detect threats like worms, virus attacks and other rogue or unsolicited activity.
  • Tuning network for better performance in most common use cases specific for a particular organization.
  • Ensuring required quality of network communication for critical applications.
  • Network trending and capacity planning.

NetFlow is the most widely-used technology to collect statistics in large, high-traffic networks. NetFlow and its kindred technologies (sFlow, J-Flow, IPFIX, NetStream, etc.) are supported by a number of network infrastructure vendors including Cisco, HP, Juniper, and many others.

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