• In a network, it is important to collect traffic flow statistics in order to understand how data moves through the infrastructure. These statistics are used for different operational and business purposes.

    There are several reasons for this:

    • In a service provider environment, flow statistics are required to analyze traffic usage and perform customer billing.

    • In an enterprise network, traffic statistics are used to monitor network usage, identify applications, and understand communication patterns between hosts.

    Benefits of NetFlow

    All this flow statistics collection provides better visibility into the network, helps optimize traffic, and assists with troubleshooting. NetFlow is a feature available in Cisco IOS that allows network traffic to be observed and exported to a collector, as shown below.

    netflow principle

    Figure 1 - NetFlow Architecture

    NetFlow is based on two main components: data capture on the router and data export to a collector.
    NetFlow consists of two main elements:

    NetFlow Data Capture

    • This component observes the traffic, creates flows, and stores them in RAM in the NetFlow cache.

    NetFlow Data Export

    • This component sends the collected statistics via UDP to a NetFlow collector.

    Answer the question below

    Why does NetFlow exist?