The IESG has approved the following document: - 'IP Flow Information Accounting and Export Benchmarking Methodology' (draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth-10.txt) as an Informational RFC This document is the product of the Benchmarking Methodology Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Ronald Bonica and Benoit Claise. A URL of this Internet Draft is: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth/ Technical Summary For internetworking devices that perform routing or switching as their primary function, the likely reduction in traffic-handling capacity when traffic monitoring is active continues to be a relevant question many years after it was first asked ("What happens when you turn-on Netflow?"). This document provides a methodology and framework for quantifying the performance impact of monitoring of IP flows on a network device and export of this information to a collector. It identifies the rate at which the IP flows are created, expired, and successfully exported as a new performance metric in combination with traditional throughput. The metric is only applicable to the devices compliant with the Architecture for IP Flow Information Export [RFC5470]. The methods are applicable to both internetworking devices that forward traffic and other devices that simply monitor traffic with non-intrusive access to transmission facilities. The Forwarding Plane and Monitoring Plane represent two separate functional blocks, each with its own performance capability. The Forwarding Plane handles user data packets and is fully characterised by the metrics defined by [RFC2544]. The Monitoring Plane handles Flows which reflect the analysed traffic. The metric for Monitoring Plane performance is Flow Export Rate, and the benchmark is the Flow Monitoring Throughput. Working Group Summary Quite a few bmwg participants and ipfix participants have given this a look and now concur with the results. Examples of Test Implementation and Results were presented during development, which is compelling evidence of practicality. There were WGLCs yielding long lists of comments/issues to deal with, and this was finally accomplished. It took several WGLCs before this version reached consensus (with a few minor editorial changes). Document Quality All would agree that Paul Aitken provided very careful and complete reviews throughout the development process; he left no stone unturned. Personnel Al Morton is shepherd.
