Flow Monitor is a network traffic monitor that lets you gather, analyze, and report on network traffic patterns and bandwidth utilization in real-time.
NetFlow is a protocol used to collect data about network IP traffic and is used to monitor and record network usage, give indications of traffic routes and provide data in support of traffic accounting, usage-based billing and other network related activities. This data is classified using the concept of a network flow.
Flow Monitor uses the 1) NetFlow exporter to observe packet data and create records from the observed data to transmit to the 2) NetFlow collector that collects records sent from the exporter and stores them in a database to be forwarded to the 3) Netflow analyzer which analyzes the records for information of interest.
No. Only network devices such as routers and switches can transmit NetFlow data.
No. You must manually configure your network devices to export flow data to Flow Monitor. For more information, see Manually configuring devices to export data to Flow Monitor and Configuring sFlow enabled devices to export flow data to Flow Monitor.
Flexible NetFlow is a Cisco IOS that is used to monitor network traffic. You can configure Flexible NetFlow on Cisco network devices to send flow information to Flow Monitor.
Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR), is a Cisco-developed application classification engine used to recognize a wide variety of applications. You can configure NBAR on Cisco network devices to work in conjunction with Flexible NetFlow.
Class-based quality of service (CBQoS) is the ability of a network to provide improved services to identified classes of network traffic. These services include supporting dedicated bandwidth, improving loss characteristics, managing network congestion, traffic shaping and setting traffic priorities. CBQoS involves two major components, traffic classes, and traffic policies. You can configure CBQoS on Cisco network devices to support your network traffic health.