21.1.1 Introduction to sFlow Stats

sFlow statistic analyzes the end-to-end traffic (flow) characteristics and the traffic characteristics of adjacent network units. It monitors the traffic flowing on the network with the relay device (router or switch). sFlow is a publicly available flow statistics protocol (RFC 3176) that supports statistics on Layer 2 to Layer 7. A switch that receives and displays sFlow statistics (referred to hereafter as sFlow packets) is called an sFlow collector (referred to hereafter as collector). A switch that sends sFlow packets to collectors is called an sFlow agent (referred to hereafter as agent). The following figure shows an example of a network configuration that uses sFlow statistics.

Figure 21-1: Sample Networking Configuration for sFlow Statistics

Figure 21-2: System configuration

Information monitored by an agent on the Switch is collected by a collector, and the statistical results are displayed graphically by an analyzer. Accordingly, use of the sFlow statistics functionality requires a collector and an analyzer.

Table 21-1: System components

Parameters	Role
Agent (Switch)	Collects statistics and sends them to a collector.
Collector#	Aggregates, edits, and displays statistics sent from an agent. The collector also sends edited data to an analyzer.
Analyzer	Graphically displays data sent from a collector.