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sFlow configuration
sFlow overview
Introduction to sFlow
Sampled Flow (sFlow) is a traffic monitoring technology mainly used to collect and analyze traffic
statistics.
As shown in
, the sFlow system involves an sFlow agent embedded in a device and a remote
sFlow collector. The sFlow agent collects traffic statistics and packet information from the sFlow-enabled
interfaces and encapsulates them into sFlow packets. When the sFlow packet buffer is full, or the age
time of sFlow packets is reached, (the age time is one second), the sFlow agent sends the packets to a
specified sFlow collector. The sFlow collector analyzes the sFlow packets and displays the results.
sFlow has the following two sampling mechanisms:
•
Flow sampling: Packet-based sampling, used to obtain packet content information.
•
Counter sampling: Time-based sampling, used to obtain port traffic statistics.
Figure 54
sFlow system
As a traffic monitoring technology, sFlow has the following advantages:
•
Supporting traffic monitoring on Gigabit and higher-speed networks.
•
Providing good scalability to allow one sFlow collector to monitor multiple sFlow agents.
•
Saving cost by embedding the sFlow agent in a device, instead of using a dedicated sFlow agent
device.
NOTE:
Only the sFlow agent function is supported on the switch.
sFlow operation
sFlow operates in the following ways:
1.
Before enabling the sFlow function, configure the sFlow agent and sFlow collector on the device.