Abstract: A scalable flow monitoring solution takes in standard flow records exported from network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, hubs, etc., and annotates the flow with additional information. This information is derived from a number of sources, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), user configuration, and other, intelligent flow analysis. These annotations add information to the flow data, and can be used to perform value-added flow analysis. The annotated flow is then resent to a configurable set of destinations using standard flow formatting, e.g., Cisco System Inc.'s NetFlow, in one implementation. This allows the annotated flow to be processed and the enhanced information to be used by other flow analysis tools and existing flow analysis infrastructure.

Abstract: In one aspect, it is realized that changes in routing configuration (and therefore network topology) may have an effect on how data is forwarded in a communication network. More particularly, it is realized the changes in the control plane have a statistical effect on information tracked in the data plane, and this relation may be used by a network manager in monitoring the network and determining a control plane cause of a data plane forwarding effect. For instance, a change in BGP routing information (control plane information) may affect the data forwarded by a router based on the changed BGP routing information (e.g., next hop data may be forwarded to a different BGP router attached to another physical port). A system and method are provided that correlate control plane and data plane information to support root cause analysis functions.