Netflow Insights

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.

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What other technologies are related to Netflow?

Netflow Competitor Technologies

IPFIX

IPFIX is a similar flow monitoring protocol standardized by IETF, often considered a successor to NetFlow.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 70% (291) of relevant job posts

sFlow

sFlow is another flow monitoring protocol that uses sampled packet headers to provide network visibility, similar to NetFlow.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 40% (346) of relevant job posts

PCAP

PCAP (packet capture) provides full packet captures, which gives more granular information than NetFlow, but at a higher resource cost. It can be used instead of Netflow for more detailed analysis.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 19% (408) of relevant job posts

Full Packet Capture

Full packet capture provides all packet data, which gives more granular information than NetFlow, but at a higher resource cost. It can be used instead of Netflow for more detailed analysis.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 24% (151) of relevant job posts

Netflow Complementary Technologies

SNMP

SNMP can provide information about network devices that NetFlow uses to enrich flow data (e.g., interface names, device properties). It is also used to configure the devices to send NetFlow data.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 8% (2.8k) of relevant job posts

Syslog

Syslog provides system event logging, which can complement NetFlow data by providing context about network behavior and security events, but doesn't provide flow data itself.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 13% (1.1k) of relevant job posts

BGP

BGP routing data can be used with NetFlow data to enrich the flow records with routing information, providing better insight into traffic paths.

mentioned alongside Netflow in 3% (3k) of relevant job posts