Re: paper needed on specific differences in NetFlow vs. sFlow..

Neil,

The whitepaper you introduced below says "SFlow is scalable". Is
there any implication, in this statement, of which it will be valid
when it compares to NetFlow? Technically either of NetFlow or SFlow
doesn't exactly specify how to gather(sample) those information
in the router/swicth, thus it simply relies on their
implementation....in other words, most likely similar mechanism
will be used...I think.

Therefore, I think there shouldn't be so much big difference
between SFLow and NetFlow in terms of scalability aspect. Correct?

Thanks and regards,
Tatsuya

> >All,
> >
> >Customers are asking for some information that specifically shows the
> >differences in sFlow vs. NetFlow. When, where, and why sFlow should be used, in
> >comparison with NetFlow.
> >
> In many situations NetFlow is OK. It provides a stream of aggregated IP
> flow records. As long as the router can generate this data comfortably
> (and the collector can consume it comfortably), then there is no reason
> to avoid it.
>
>
> At higher speeds, however, we have seen that some routers are not so
> comfortable generating detailed records (NetFlow version 5). With
> NetFlow version 8,9 the router can be configured to aggregate more
> heavily. This might be acceptable for a specific billing solution, but
> then you lose the granularity of detail that you need for operational
> tasks like congestion management, troubleshooting and security monitoring.
>
>
> Others prefer sFlow because they need visibility at layer-2 (MAC
> addresses, VLAN ids) or detailed BGP AS-Path data (or IPX, or IPv6...).
>
>
> Being able to enable monitoring on all ports at no extra cost has
> advantages too. It's much easier to trace problems to their source if
> every link in the network is giving you application-layer flows and
> interface counters all the time. With sFlow a network-wide, end-end
> view of L2-L7 traffic can be built by a single collector.
>
>
> For a more detailed comparison, see InMon Corp.'s white paper:
> http://www.inmon.com/PDF/sFlowOverview.pdf

-- 
Tatsuya Yanagibashi <tyanagibashi@mbc.ocn.ne.jp>