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Chapter 65: sFlow Agent
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Overview
The sFlow agent allows the switch to gather data about the traffic on the
ports and to send the data to an sFlow collector on your network for
analysis. You can use the information to monitor the performance of your
network or identify traffic bottlenecks.
The sFlow agent can gather two types of information about the traffic on
the ports of the switch:
Ingress packet samples
Packet counters
Ingress Packet
Samples
The sFlow agent can capture ingress packets on ports and send copies of
the packets to an sFlow collector on your network for analysis. Depending
on the capabilities of a collector, packets can be scrutinized for source and
destination MAC or IP addresses, protocol type, length, and so forth.
Packet sampling is activated by specifying sampling rates on the ports.
This value defines the average number of ingress packets from which the
agent samples one packet. For example, a sampling rate of 1000 on a port
prompts the agent to send one packet from an average of 1000 ingress
packets to the designated sFlow collector. Different ports can have
different rates.
Packet Counters The agent can also gather and send data to a collector about overall
information regarding the status and performance of the ports, such as
speeds and status, and the statistics from the packet counters. The
counters contain the number and types of ingress and egress packets
handled by the ports since the switch or the counters were last reset. Here
is the port status and counter information the agent can gather and send
to a collector on your network:
Port number
Port type
Speed
Direction
Status
Number of ingress and egress octets
Number of ingress and egress unicast packets
Number of ingress and egress multicast packets
Number of ingress and egress broadcast packets
Number of ingress and egress discarded packets