📄 rfc2722.txt
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this. In the future the measurement model may be extended to gather such information from applications and hosts so as to provide values for higher-layer flow attributes. As well as FLOWS and METERS, the traffic flow measurement model includes MANAGERS, METER READERS and ANALYSIS APPLICATIONS, which are explained in following sections. The relationships between them are shown by the diagram below. Numbers on the diagram refer to sections in this document. MANAGER / \ 2.3 / \ 2.4 / \ / \ ANALYSIS METER <-----> METER READER <-----> APPLICATION 2.2 2.7 - MANAGER: A traffic measurement manager is an application which configures 'meter' entities and controls 'meter reader' entities. It sends configuration commands to the meters, and supervises the proper operation of each meter and meter reader. It may well be convenient to combine the functions of meter reader and manager within a single network entity. - METER: Meters are placed at measurement points determined by Network Operations personnel. Each meter selectively records network activity as directed by its configuration settings. It can also aggregate, transform and further process the recorded activity before the data is stored. The processed and stored results are called the 'usage data'. - METER READER: A meter reader transports usage data from meters so that it is available to analysis applications.Brownlee, et al. Informational [Page 6]RFC 2722 Traffic Flow Measurement: Architecture October 1999 - ANALYSIS APPLICATION: An analysis application processes the usage data so as to provide information and reports which are useful for network engineering and management purposes. Examples include: - TRAFFIC FLOW MATRICES, showing the total flow rates for many of the possible paths within an internet. - FLOW RATE FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS, summarizing flow rates over a period of time. - USAGE DATA showing the total traffic volumes sent and received by particular hosts. The operation of the traffic measurement system as a whole is best understood by considering the interactions between its components. These are described in the following sections.2.2 Interaction Between METER and METER READER The information which travels along this path is the usage data itself. A meter holds usage data in an array of flow data records known as the FLOW TABLE. A meter reader may collect the data in any suitable manner. For example it might upload a copy of the whole flow table using a file transfer protocol, or read the records in the current flow set one at a time using a suitable data transfer protocol. Note that the meter reader need not read complete flow data records, a subset of their attribute values may well be sufficient. A meter reader may collect usage data from one or more meters. Data may be collected from the meters at any time. There is no requirement for collections to be synchronized in any way.2.3 Interaction Between MANAGER and METER A manager is responsible for configuring and controlling one or more meters. Each meter's configuration includes information such as: - Flow specifications, e.g. which traffic flows are to be measured, how they are to be aggregated, and any data the meter is required to compute for each flow being measured. - Meter control parameters, e.g. the 'inactivity' time for flows (if no packets belonging to a flow are seen for this time the flow is considered to have ended, i.e. to have become idle).Brownlee, et al. Informational [Page 7]RFC 2722 Traffic Flow Measurement: Architecture October 1999 - Sampling behaviour. Normally every packet will be observed. It may sometimes be necessary to use sampling techniques so as to observe only some of the packets (see following note). A note about sampling: Current experience with the measurement architecture shows that a carefully-designed and implemented meter compresses the data sufficiently well that in normal LANs and WANs of today sampling is seldom, if ever, needed. For this reason sampling algorithms are not prescribed by the architecture. If sampling is needed, e.g. for metering a very-high-speed network with fine-grained flows, the sampling technique should be carefully chosen so as not to bias the results. For a good introduction to this topic see the IPPM Working Group's RFC "Framework for IP Performance Metrics" [IPPM- FRM]. A meter may run several rule sets concurrently on behalf of one or more managers, and any manager may download a set of flow specifications (i.e. a 'rule set') to a meter. Control parameters which apply to an individual rule set should be set by the manager after it downloads that rule set. One manager should be designated as the 'master' for a meter. Parameters such as sampling behaviour, which affect the overall operation of the meter, should only be set by the master manager.2.4 Interaction Between MANAGER and METER READER A manager is responsible for configuring and controlling one or more meter readers. A meter reader may only be controlled by a single manager. A meter reader needs to know at least the following for every meter it is collecting usage data from: - The meter's unique identity, i.e. its network name or address. - How often usage data is to be collected from the meter. - Which flow records are to be collected (e.g. all flows, flows for a particular rule set, flows which have been active since a given time, etc.). - Which attribute values are to be collected for the required flow records (e.g. all attributes, or a small subset of them) Since redundant reporting may be used in order to increase the reliability of usage data, exchanges among multiple entities must be considered as well. These are discussed below.Brownlee, et al. Informational [Page 8]RFC 2722 Traffic Flow Measurement: Architecture October 19992.5 Multiple METERs or METER READERs -- METER READER A -- / | \ / | \ =====METER 1 METER 2=====METER 3 METER 4===== \ | / \ | / -- METER READER B -- Several uniquely identified meters may report to one or more meter readers. The diagram above gives an example of how multiple meters and meter readers could be used. In the diagram above meter 1 is read by meter reader A, and meter 4 is read by meter reader B. Meters 1 and 4 have no redundancy; if either meter fails, usage data for their network segments will be lost. Meters 2 and 3, however, measure traffic on the same network segment. One of them may fail leaving the other collecting the segment's usage data. Meters 2 and 3 are read by meter reader A and by meter reader B. If one meter reader fails, the other will continue collecting usage data from both meters. The architecture does not require multiple meter readers to be synchronized. In the situation above meter readers A and B could both collect usage data at the same intervals, but not necesarily at the same times. Note that because collections are asynchronous it is unlikely that usage records from two different meter readers will agree exactly. If identical usage records were required from a single meter, a manager could achieve this using two identical copies of a ruleset in that meter. Let's call them RS1 and RS2, and assume that RS1 is running. When a collection is to be made the manager switches the meter from RS1 to RS2, and directs the meter reader(s) to read flow data for RS1 from the meter. For the next collection the manager switches back to RS1, and so on. Note, however, that it is not possible to get identical usage records from more than one meter, since there is no way for a manager to switch rulesets in more than one meter at the same time. If there is only one meter reader and it fails, the meters continue to run. When the meter reader is restarted it can collect all of the accumulated flow data. Should this happen, time resolution will be lost (because of the missed collections) but overall traffic flow information will not. The only exception to this would occur if theBrownlee, et al. Informational [Page 9]RFC 2722 Traffic Flow Measurement: Architecture October 1999 traffic volume was sufficient to 'roll over' counters for some flows during the failure; this is addressed in the section on 'Rolling Counters'.2.6 Interaction Between MANAGERs (MANAGER - MANAGER) Synchronization between multiple management systems is the province of network management protocols. This traffic flow measurement architecture specifies only the network management controls necessary to perform the traffic flow measurement function and does not address the more global issues of simultaneous or interleaved (possibly conflicting) commands from multiple network management stations or the process of transferring control from one network management station to another.2.7 METER READERs and APPLICATIONs Once a collection of usage data has been assembled by a meter reader it can be processed by an analysis application. Details of analysis applications - such as the reports they produce and the data they require - are outside the scope of this architecture. It should be noted, however, that analysis applications will often require considerable amounts of input data. An important part of running a traffic flow measurement system is the storage and regular reduction of flow data so as to produce daily, weekly or monthly summary files for further analysis. Again, details of such data handling are outside the scope of this architecture.3 Traffic Flows and Reporting Granularity A flow was defined in section 2.1 above in abstract terms as follows: "A TRAFFIC FLOW is an artifical logical equivalent to a call or connection, belonging to a (user-specieied) METERED TRAFFIC GROUP." In practical terms, a flow is a stream of packets observed by the meter as they pass across a network between two end points (or from a single end point), which have been summarized by a traffic meter for analysis purposes.3.1 Flows and their Attributes Every traffic meter maintains a table of 'flow records' for flows seen by the meter. A flow record holds the values of the ATTRIBUTES of interest for its flow. These attributes might include:Brownlee, et al. Informational [Page 10]RFC 2722 Traffic Flow Measurement: Architecture October 1999 - ADDRESSES for the flow's source and destination. These comprise the protocol type, the source and destination addresses at various network layers (extracted from the packet header), and the number of the interface on which the packet was observed. - First and last TIMES when packets were seen for this flow, i.e. the 'creation' and 'last activity' times for the flow. - COUNTS for 'forward' (source to destination) and 'backward' (destination to source) components (e.g. packets and bytes) of the flow's traffic. The specifying of 'source' and 'destination' for flows is discussed in the section on packet matching below. - OTHER attributes, e.g. the index of the flow's record in the flow table and the rule set number for the rules which the meter was running while the flow was observed. The values of these attributes provide a way of distinguishing flows observed by a meter at different times. The attributes listed in this document (Appendix C) provide a basic (i.e. useful minimum) set; IANA considerations for allocating new attributes are set out in section 8 below. A flow's METERED TRAFFIC GROUP is specified by the values of its
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