Re: [Nfsen-discuss] AS to AS traffic matrix

[Maurizio M. <mau...@da...>]

Peter Haag wrote:

> Hi Maurizio,
>
> --On April 12, 2006 10:39:00 +0100 Maurizio Molina
> <mau...@da...> wrote:
>
> | Hi,
> | I would like to have some opinion/advice on how a AS to AS traffic
> | matric visualisation could be implemented in NFSEN.
> | In our network (the GEANT2 core) we collect Netflow data on all the
> | peering interfaces with external networks (NRENs), and our routers are
> | configured to export "previous AS, next AS" information. Therefore, the
> | AS to AS traffic matrix for us corresponds to an NREN to NREN traffic
> | marix, and it would be very useful.
> | The AS numbers are known and fixed, so the commands to filter and
> | aggregate those flows are already available, both in nfdump and in
> nfsen.
> | In theory, I could set up a profile for each AS to AS relationship, but
> | this would mean manually define more than 400 profiles (we have more
> | than 20 peering ASs).
> | What I would like to have is:
> | 1) a method to set up (and administer) these profiles in a compact way,
> | e.g. just  entering the 20 AS numbers, all the 400 profiles are
> | automatically set up.
>
> In theory, you could do that with a shell script, as the command line
> tool 'nfsen' allows you to setup profiles easily. But current nfsen stores
> data along with any existing profile, which means you get a lange amount
> of additional data with 400 profiles. However, you could expire the
> data on
> a tight schedule. Upcoming nfsen-1.3 will include new profile type -
> shadow,
> which does not store any additional data.

Hi Peter,
where can I find information about this CLI interface?
as regards the data size, the raw data accumulated should be more or
less of the same size as the profile live (probably something more, as
for each profile there is some overhaead and .gif and .rrd graphs, but I
don't think it's a big issue. And as you say, raw data can be expired
aggressively: these profiles would be mainly useful for planning, i.e.
the aggredated data is more important than the single flows...

>
> | 2) a method to have a compact, tabular representation of the traffic
> | exchanged on each relationship, with the possibility of  selecting the
> | time window, in the past, to look at. That is, a method to select a
> | single value from the rrd files for each profile, and represent in a
> | table together with the analogous values of the other profiles.
>
> This could be done in a plugin.

Can you provide me some more details/pointers about what that exactly
menans?

>
> | 3) Ideally, a method to focus then on a single row/column of the table
> | and have a graphical representation of the "time evolution" of that row
> | or column, e.g. in the form of a stacked graph like the ones that Nfsen
> | already provides
>
> That would require a dynamic reorganisation of stat data and plotting them
> on the fly. I already had such type of graphs in mind for other purposes.
> But it looks like, this will not yet go into v1.3

ok, as said, this is not probably the most urgent feature, I can address
it once I've solved 1) and 2)...
Thanks,
Maurizio

>
> |
> | I'd appreciate any advice about how to tackle the  implementation of
> | such a feature, and in particular what existig pieces of nfsen can be
> | reused.
> | Thanks,
> | Maurizio
> |
>