Subject: Document Action: 'IP Flow Information Accounting and Export Benchmarking Methodology' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth-10.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:11:07 -0700

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'IP Flow Information Accounting and Export Benchmarking Methodology'
  (draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth-10.txt) as an Informational RFC

This document is the product of the Benchmarking Methodology Working
Group.

The IESG contact persons are Ronald Bonica and Benoit Claise.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth/

     Technical Summary 
For internetworking devices that perform routing or switching as 
their primary function, the likely reduction in traffic-handling
capacity when traffic monitoring is active continues to be a relevant 
question many years after it was first asked ("What happens when you
turn-on Netflow?"). 

This document provides a methodology and framework for quantifying 
the performance impact of monitoring of IP flows on a network device
and export of this information to a collector. It identifies the rate 
at which the IP flows are created, expired, and successfully exported 
as a new performance metric in combination with traditional 
throughput. The metric is only applicable to the devices compliant 
with the Architecture for IP Flow Information Export [RFC5470].

The methods are applicable to both internetworking devices that 
forward traffic and other devices that simply monitor traffic with 
non-intrusive access to transmission facilities.
The Forwarding Plane and Monitoring Plane represent two separate
functional blocks, each with its own performance capability. The
Forwarding Plane handles user data packets and is fully characterised 
by the metrics defined by [RFC2544]. 
The Monitoring Plane handles Flows which reflect the analysed 
traffic. The metric for Monitoring Plane performance is Flow Export 
Rate, and the benchmark is the Flow Monitoring Throughput.

     Working Group Summary 
Quite a few bmwg participants and ipfix participants have given this a look
and now concur with the results. 
Examples of Test Implementation and Results were presented 
during development, which is compelling evidence of practicality.
There were WGLCs yielding long lists of comments/issues to deal with, 
and this was finally accomplished. It took several WGLCs before this version
reached consensus (with a few minor editorial changes).  

     Document Quality 
All would agree that Paul Aitken provided very careful and complete 
reviews throughout the development process; he left no stone unturned.

Personnel 
Al Morton  is shepherd.