What is Netflow?

NetFlow is a network protocol developed by Cisco for collecting IP traffic information and monitoring network flow. By analyzing NetFlow data, network administrators can gain insights into network traffic patterns, identify security threats, monitor application performance, and perform capacity planning. It works by collecting data on flows, which are unidirectional sequences of packets sharing the same source IP address, destination IP address, source port, destination port, and IP protocol. This data is then exported to a NetFlow collector for analysis.