Network Flow Analysis

Time-Series Example: Bandwidth

One common question network engineers get is "How much bandwidth does this application use?" I've worked in more than one global operation where management was concerned about how much internal bandwidth email consumed or where the Active Directory team needed to know how much bandwidth the interdomain controller communications used.

Flow reports can answer this question in many different ways. An average of bandwidth use through the day is useful but won't reveal intermittent performance bottlenecks. A connection that's completely idle most of the time but that has a massive throughput spike during each day's peak hours might have an average throughput of about 50Kbps. The one-day average is simultaneously accurate ...