Reducing Redundancy in IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) and Packet Sampling (PSAMP) Reports
RFC 5473
Network Working Group E. Boschi
Request for Comments: 5473 Hitachi Europe
Category: Informational L. Mark
Fraunhofer IFAM
B. Claise
Cisco Systems, Inc.
March 2009
Reducing Redundancy in IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
and Packet Sampling (PSAMP) Reports
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
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Abstract
This document describes a bandwidth saving method for exporting Flow
or packet information using the IP Flow Information eXport (IPFIX)
protocol. As the Packet Sampling (PSAMP) protocol is based on IPFIX,
these considerations are valid for PSAMP exports as well.
Boschi, et al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 5473 Reducing Redundancy March 2009
This method works by separating information common to several Flow
Records from information specific to an individual Flow Record.
Common Flow information is exported only once in a Data Record
defined by an Options Template, while the rest of the specific Flow
information is associated with the common information via a unique
identifier.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
1.1. IPFIX Documents Overview ...................................3
1.2. PSAMP Documents Overview ...................................4
2. Terminology .....................................................4
2.1. Terminology Summary Table ..................................5
2.2. IPFIX Flows versus PSAMP Packets ...........................5
3. Specifications for Bandwidth-Saving Information Export ..........5
3.1. Problem Statement and High-Level Solution ..................6
3.2. Data Reduction Technique ...................................7
4. Transport Protocol Choice .......................................8
4.1. PR-SCTP ....................................................9
4.2. UDP ........................................................9
4.3. TCP ........................................................9
5. commonPropertiesID Management ...................................9
6. The Collecting Process Side ....................................10
6.1. UDP .......................................................11
6.2. TCP .......................................................12
7. Advanced Techniques ............................................12
7.1. Multiple Data Reduction ...................................12
7.2. Cascading Common Properties ...............................15
8. Export and Evaluation Considerations ...........................15
8.1. Transport Protocol Choice .................................16
8.2. Reduced Size Encoding .....................................16
8.3. Efficiency Gain ...........................................16
9. Security Considerations ........................................17
10. Acknowledgments ...............................................17
11. References ....................................................17
11.1. Normative References .....................................17
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