Diving Deeper with NetFlow – Tips and Tricks – PART FIVE!

Welcome to SolarWinds blog series “Diving Deeper with NetFlow – Tips and Tricks”. This is the fifth part of the six part series where you can learn new tips by understanding more about NetFlow and some use cases for effective network monitoring.

In the previous blog, we had discussed monitoring BYOD, its implications on your network, and how NetFlow helps breakdown BYOD bandwidth usage by monitoring what kind of applications are being used. In this blog, we will dive into Quality of Service (QoS) to understand how you can implement QoS polices across your network by analyzing the data from NetFlow.

In today’s advanced network environment, controlling and validating network traffic has become more challenging due to unwanted applications installed on BYOD devices. Rogue applications can block network bandwidth resulting in an interruption of important business applications. It is vital to define Quality of Service (QoS) and set priorities for various applications.   As an example, 50% of your bandwidth can be set to VoIP applications which are business sensitive while other non-critical applications are allocated lower bandwidth. Thus, by defining QoS classes and assigning policies, network administrators can set predefined actions to be triggered under specific cases.

Applications will compete with each other for bandwidth when traversing the WAN and since bandwidth is neither infinite nor free, it only makes sense that you will want to see how your bandwidth is being used.  Since NetFlow data reports on Type of Service (ToS) and DSCP fields from traffic conversations you can monitor your bandwidth usage by application and measure the effectiveness of your QoS policies.

Using NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, you can view network traffic segmented by Class of Service methods, such as Type of Service or DSCP ensuring that critical traffic such as voice or video is prioritized and isn’t dropped.

To learn more about NetFlow, check out our NetFlow V9 Datagram Knowledge Series.

Watch the entire ‘Diving Deeper with NetFlow – Tips and Tricks’ webcast here and become an expert in understanding and implementing NetFlow in your enterprise networks.

Download a free fully functional 30-day trial of SolarWinds Bandwidth Analyzer Pack.