Exporting Type Information for IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Information Elements
RFC 5610
Network Working Group E. Boschi
Request for Comments: 5610 B. Trammell
Category: Standards Track Hitachi Europe
L. Mark
Fraunhofer IFAM
T. Zseby
Fraunhofer FOKUS
July 2009
Exporting Type Information for
IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Information Elements
Abstract
This document describes an extension to the IP Flow Information
Export (IPFIX) protocol, which is used to represent and transmit data
from IP flow measurement devices for collection, storage, and
analysis, to allow the encoding of IPFIX Information Model properties
within an IPFIX Message stream. This enables the export of extended
type information for enterprise-specific Information Elements and the
storage of such information within IPFIX Files, facilitating
interoperability and reusability among a wide variety of applications
and tools.
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
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Boschi, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 5610 IPFIX Type Information July 2009
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. IPFIX Documents Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Type Information Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. informationElementDataType . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. informationElementDescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3. informationElementName . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4. informationElementRangeBegin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5. informationElementRangeEnd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.6. informationElementSemantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.7. informationElementUnits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.8. privateEnterpriseNumber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.9. Information Element Type Options Template . . . . . . . . 10
3.10. Data Type and Semantics Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Appendix A. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Boschi, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 5610 IPFIX Type Information July 2009
1. Introduction
IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) provides a template mechanism for
the flexible description of Data Records, by defining a record as a
collection of Information Elements defined in an IANA registry,
However, these Templates provide limited information about the type
of described data; indeed, they encode only the size of the fields
defined by these Information Elements. There presently exists no
mechanism to provide full type information for these Information
Elements, as is defined for the Information Elements in the IPFIX
Information Model [RFC5102].
This especially limits the interoperability of enterprise-specific
Information Elements. It is not possible to use analysis tools on
IPFIX records containing these partially defined Information Elements
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