Monitoring major contributors of network traffic:
Network engineers can easily see top talkers and listeners on the network.
Understanding application traffic and its network impact:
An example is identifying unusual application network loads such as video content or large file transfers. NetFlow statistics can also be used to measure how application and policy changes affect costly WAN traffic.
Optimizing Internet peering relationships:
Organizations operating BGP peerings to maintain multi-homed connectivity to the Internet can utilize NetFlow data fused with BGP routing data to perform sophisticated peering analysis and optimize their peering arrangements. This can help to improve service quality, reduce peering costs, or even uncover new revenue opportunities as a result of usage pattern analysis.
Troubleshooting and understanding network pain points:
NetFlow tool-based analysis can be used to diagnose slow network performance, recognize bandwidth hogs or misconfigurations, and characterize bandwidth utilization quickly via the intrinsic representation of traffic totals and traffic details.
Detecting unauthorized WAN traffic:
By analyzing a network with a NetFlow tool, it becomes possible to avoid costly upgrades to expensive WAN services by identifying the applications causing congestion, verifying legitimacy, and adjusting delivery policies to mitigate any adverse impact on higher-value concurrent traffic streams.
DDoS and anomaly detection:
NetFlow tools can also be used for the detection of DoS/DDoS and other types of network behaviour anomalies.
Validating QoS parameters:
Because NetFlow includes all packet priority markings, it can be used to confirm that appropriate bandwidth has been allocated to each Class of Service (CoS) and that no CoS is over or under-subscribed.
