3Com 4210G Series, Configuration Manual, Page: 317 / 1133

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sFlow Configuration
When configuring sFlow, go to these sections for information you are interested in:
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sFlow Overview
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Configuring sFlow
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Displaying and Maintaining sFlow
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sFlow Configuration Example
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Troubleshooting sFlow Configuration
sFlow Overview
Introduction to sFlow
Sampled Flow (sFlow) is a traffic monitoring technology mainly used to collect and analyze traffic
statistics.
The sFlow system involves an sFlow agent embedded in a device and a remote sFlow collector. The
sFlow agent collects traffic statistics and packets from the sFlow enabled ports on the device,
encapsulates the information into sFlow packets, and sends the packets to the sFlow collector. The
sFlow collector analyzes the sFlow packets and displays the results.
sFlow has the following two sampling mechanisms:
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Packet-based sampling: An sFlow enabled port samples one packet out of a configurable number
of packets passing through it.
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Time-based sampling: The sFlow agent samples the statistics of all sFlow enabled ports at a
configurable interval.
As a traffic monitoring technology, sFlow has the following advantages:
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Supporting traffic monitoring on Gigabit and higher-speed networks.
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Providing scalability to allow one sFlow collector to monitor multiple or more sFlow agents.
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Implementing the low-cost sFlow agent.
Currently, only the sFlow agent function is supported on the device.
Operation of sFlow
sFlow operates as follows:
1) With sFlow enabled, a physical port encapsulates sampled data into packets and sends them to
the sFlow agent.
2) The sFlow agent periodically collects the statistics of all sFlow enabled ports.