1-11 sFlow ConfigurationWhen configuring sFlow, go to these sections for information you are interested in:z sFlow Overviewz Configuring sFlowz Displaying and Maintaining sFlowz sFlow Configuration Examplez Troubleshooting sFlow ConfigurationsFlow OverviewIntroduction to sFlowSampled Flow (sFlow) is a traffic monitoring technology mainly used to collect and analyze trafficstatistics.The sFlow system involves an sFlow agent embedded in a device and a remote sFlow collector. ThesFlow agent collects traffic statistics and packets from the sFlow enabled ports on the device,encapsulates the information into sFlow packets, and sends the packets to the sFlow collector. ThesFlow collector analyzes the sFlow packets and displays the results.sFlow has the following two sampling mechanisms:z Packet-based sampling: An sFlow enabled port samples one packet out of a configurable numberof packets passing through it.z Time-based sampling: The sFlow agent samples the statistics of all sFlow enabled ports at aconfigurable interval.As a traffic monitoring technology, sFlow has the following advantages:z Supporting traffic monitoring on Gigabit and higher-speed networks.z Providing scalability to allow one sFlow collector to monitor multiple or more sFlow agents.z Implementing the low-cost sFlow agent.Currently, only the sFlow agent function is supported on 3Com Switch 4500G family.Operation of sFlowsFlow operates as follows:1) With sFlow enabled, a physical port encapsulates sampled data into packets and sends them tothe sFlow agent.2) The sFlow agent periodically collects the statistics of all sFlow enabled ports.
