Netflow Monitoring

SNMP shows link usage. NetFlow shows which applications are driving that usage. Is it legitimate business traffic (Salesforce, Teams) or shadow IT (Spotify, Windows Update, a crypto miner)? You can’t optimize what you can’t classify.

But if you are running a network of any meaningful size—five routers, a data center, a remote office with 50 people—and you do not have flow visibility, you are flying blind. Bandwidth graphs show you the forest is on fire. NetFlow tells you which tree is burning, who lit the match, and where they’re running. netflow monitoring

Anomaly detection flagged a Linux VM generating 5x more outbound UDP traffic than its peers. Destination ports kept changing (random high-numbered). Turns out, a compromised container was mining Monero and tunneling it over DNS. Flow data exposed the behavioral pattern, not the payload. SNMP shows link usage

(originally Cisco, now an industry standard with IPFIX, sFlow, and jFlow variants) is a technology that samples or aggregates IP traffic into flows . You can’t optimize what you can’t classify