diff --git a/doc/src/introduction.rst b/doc/src/introduction.rst index a487706..637479c 100644 --- a/doc/src/introduction.rst +++ b/doc/src/introduction.rst @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Introduction ############ -Traffic measurements are necessary to operate all types of IP networks. Networks admin need a detailed view of network traffic for security, accounting and management reasons. The compositions of the traffic have to be analyzed accurately when estimating traffic metrics or when finding network problems. All of these measurements have to be made by analyzing all the packets flowing to the central points in the network (such as router and/or switches). The analysis could be done on the fly or by logging all the packets and than post-processing them. But with the increasing network capacities and traffic volumes this kind of approach is not very efficient. Instead similar packets (packets with a set of common properties) can be grouped together composing flows. As an example, a flow can be composed of all flowing packets that share the same source and destination address so a flow can be derived using only some fields of a network packet. This way, similar types of traffic can be stored in a more compact format without loosing the information we are interested in. This information can be aggregated in a flow datagram and exported to a collector able to report network metrics in a user-friendly format. +Traffic measurements are necessary to operate all types of IP networks. Networks admin need a detailed view of network traffic for security, accounting and management reasons. The compositions of the traffic have to be analyzed accurately when estimating traffic metrics or when finding network problems. All of these measurements have to be made by analyzing all the packets flowing to the central points in the network (such as router and/or switches). The analysis could be done on the fly or by logging all the packets and then post-processing them. But with the increasing network capacities and traffic volumes this kind of approach is not very efficient. Instead similar packets (packets with a set of common properties) can be grouped together composing flows. As an example, a flow can be composed of all flowing packets that share the same source and destination address so a flow can be derived using only some fields of a network packet. This way, similar types of traffic can be stored in a more compact format without loosing the information we are interested in. This information can be aggregated in a flow datagram and exported to a collector able to report network metrics in a user-friendly format. When collected this information provides a detailed view of the network traffic. Precise network metric measurements is a challenging task so a lot of work has been done in this filed. In commercial environments, NetFlow is probably the de-facto standard for network traffic accounting and billing. NetFlow is a technology originally created by Cisco in 1996 and is now standardized as Internet Protocol Flow Information eXport (IPFIX -- RFC 3917). NetFlow is based on the probe/collector paradigm. The probe, usually part of network appliance such as a router or a switch, is deployed on the measured network segment, it sends traffic information in NetFlow format towards a central collector.