What is Flexible NetFlow and why should you use it? In this blog post, let’s take a look at the basics of Application Visibility in the network for capacity planning and security.
In an enterprise, hundreds of applications are accessed by users from different locations within the campus and remotely from a branch or home. The application usage is usually not known beforehand and increases non-uniformly over time. This non-uniform app usage translates to non-uniform increases in traffic across the network which complicates capacity planning. Another complexity to capacity planning is that there can be sudden spikes in the traffic due to security issues such as internal security breaches, viruses, Denial of Service attacks, or network-propagated worms. IT administrators should not wait for these incidents to happen in order to tackle them. Instead, administrators must have the ability to see the usage pattern in advance for capacity planning and security incident detection and remediation.
Tags: Catalyst 3560-X, Catalyst 3750-X, Catalyst 4500, Catalyst 4500E, Catalyst 6500, Cisco, Cisco Catalyst, Demystifyng the Catalyst, Denial of Service attack, Flexible NetFlow, FNF, How many apps are running in an enterprise, IOS Tools, Switching 101