Analyzing IP traffic

When it comes to gleaning IP-based traffic information from routers for everything from monitoring traffic levels to garnering accounting and billing information, there are any number of ways you can do it.   Therein lies the problem – at least from the standards community vantage point. There is a need for a standard way for network executives to extract and view IP traffic statistics stored in their routers.

When it comes to gleaning IP-based traffic information from routers for everything from monitoring traffic levels to garnering accounting and billing information, there are any number of ways you can do it. 

Therein lies the problem – at least from the standards community vantage point. There is a need for a standard way for network executives to extract and view IP traffic statistics stored in their routers.

Our Technology Update author this week looks at the proposed Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard that promises to fix this issue: Internet Protocol Information eXport (IPFIX).

Specifically, our author says IPFIX defines the format by which IP flow information can be transferred from an exporter (router or switch) to a collector (also called a mediation device). Applications that support IPFIX will understand and display statistics received from any router that also supports the standard. 

The interesting thing about IPFIX is that IT departments will no longer have to match routers supporting proprietary export formats with applications that have been developed specifically to support those formats, our author states. The export format also is extensible, so network managers won’t have to upgrade their router software or management tools as their traffic-monitoring requirements change.

For more on this technology see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/tech/2003/0811techupdate.html