Practical Guide to Modern Networking Telemetry

Chapter 1. Network and Telemetry Introduction

To talk clearly, coherently, and concisely about network monitoring and observability, we need to lay the groundwork. Now, maybe you already know everything there is to know about networks, from the very first ARPANET packet all the way to the 1.02 petabits-per-second multicore fiber marvel running in a research lab in Japan. But do you? Too many mistakes in tech come not from misconfigurations but from misunderstandings. In this chapter, we’ll explain our context for concepts as far-ranging as “What is a network?” to the devices that make up that network, and on to the data types we’ll focus on for the rest of this book.

What IS Network Telemetry, Redux

In the Introduction, we offered a high-level description of network telemetry, but now it’s time to really dig in with a detailed explanation. Network telemetry refers to data about your network rather than the data that’s moving around your network. Network telemetry includes everything from the relatively simple device information (think: what are the make, model, and subcomponents in the gear that make up my network) to the more relevant (and important) performance and state information about the devices themselves (e.g., metrics related to resource consumption and device state).

Network telemetry really hits hard when it gives you detailed information about the network traffic itself. Where are those packets coming from or going to, which might include everything from IP addresses ...