Hope you have seen my previous blog on Netflow

If not please check it out as this blog has some dependencies on my previous blog. However if you have idea about FNF(Flexible Netflow) and how it works then you  can continue reading this blog.

This blog talks about an extended Netflow version which is called Performance monitor.Suppose you want to get more out of the the network monitoring, you have already achieved the the goal of understanding application level and per user level traffic in your network with the help of netflow(FNF) but now you want to move forward and try to see if you can monitor network delays, jitter etc for the time critical traffic for example for video traffic with the help of Netflow monitoring.

Performance monitoring gives you the capability to do this by capturing timestamps embedded in the flows. You can monitor these timers and try to catch any issues before it becomes severe.

Configuration of the flow monitor is a blend of QOS and FNF configuration. So if you know how to configure QOS and FNF , performance monitor configuration should be a cake walk for you.

Following is a working configuration for your reference.

flow record type performance-monitor RECORD
 match ipv4 protocol
 match application name
 match connection client ipv4 address
 match connection server ipv4 address
 match connection server transport port
 collect ipv4 dscp
 collect interface input
 collect interface output
 collect timestamp sys-uptime first
 collect timestamp sys-uptime last
 collect connection delay network to-server max
 collect connection delay network to-client max
 collect connection delay application max
 collect connection delay response client-to-server max
!
flow monitor type performance-monitor MONITOR
 record RECORD
 exporter EXPORTER
!
flow exporter EXPORTER
 destination x.x.x.x ------> IP address for Netflow collector
 source GigabitEthernet0/0/0
 transport udp 9996
 option application-table timeout 60
 option application-attributes timeout 300
!
policy-map type performance-monitor PERF-POLICY
class class-default
flow monitor MONITOR
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/0/0
service-policy type performance-monitor input PERF-POLICY
service-policy type performance-monitor output PERF-POLICY

One this is done you can use following commands you check if it has enabled and router has started sending the flow data:

You can clearly see that there are various type of delays and the timers and are being exported now so you can monitor these delays and predict any future problems.

I do not have proper netflow tool setup which can show performance monitor data in pictorial format but I think for router perspective you do not need anything more than this. You can tweak the record further to get the data as per your needs.

Thanks for visiting my blog , please leave your suggestions and comment in the comment section below.

Stay tuned for more.