Reference Guide

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sFlow
The Dell Networking Operating System (OS) supports sFlow version 5.
Overview
sFlow is a standard-based sampling technology embedded within switches and routers which is used to
monitor network traffic.
It is designed to provide traffic monitoring for high-speed networks with many switches and routers.
sFlow uses two types of sampling:
• Statistical packet-based sampling of switched or routed packet flows.
• Time-based sampling of interface counters.
The sFlow monitoring system consists of an sFlow agent (embedded in the switch/router) and an sFlow
collector. The sFlow agent resides anywhere within the path of the packet and combines the flow
samples and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to the sFlow collector at regular
intervals. The datagrams consist of information on, but not limited to, packet header, ingress and egress
interfaces, sampling parameters, and interface counters.
Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) typically complete packet sampling. sFlow collector
analyses the sFlow datagrams received from different devices and produces a network-wide view of
traffic flows.
sFlow
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