flow-tools - Tool set for working with NetFlow data.

Flow-tools is library and a collection of programs used to collect, send, process, and generate reports from NetFlow data. The tools can be used together on a single server or distributed to multiple servers for large deployments. The flow-toools library provides an API for development of custom applications for NetFlow export versions 1,5,6 and the 14 currently defined version 8 subversions. A Perl and Python interface have been contributed and are included in the distribution.

Flow data is collected and stored by default in host byte order, yet the files are portable across big and little endian architectures.

Commands that utilize the network use a localip/remoteip/port designation for communication. "localip" is the IP address the host will use as a source for sending or bind to when receiving NetFlow PDU's (ie the destination address of the exporter. Configuring the "localip" to 0 will force the kernel to decide what IP address to use for sending and listen on all IP addresses for receiving. "remoteip" is the destination IP address used for sending or the expected address of the source when receiving. If the "remoteip" is 0 then the application will accept flows from any source address. The "port" is the UDP port number used for sending or receiving. When using multicast addresses the localip/remoteip/port is used to represent the source, group, and port respectively.

Flows are exported from a router in a number of different configurable versions. A flow is a collection of key fields and additional data. The flow key is {srcaddr, dstaddr, input, output, srcport, dstport, prot, ToS}. Flow-tools supports one export version per file.

Export versions 1, 5, 6, and 7 all maintain {nexthop, dPkts, dOctets, First, Last, flags}, ie the next-hop IP address, number of packets, number of octets (bytes), start time, end time, and flags such as the TCP header bits. Version 5 adds the additional fields {src_as, dst_as, src_mask, dst_mask}, ie source AS, destination AS, source network mask, and destination network mask. Version 7 which is specific to the Catalyst switches adds in addition to the version 5 fields {router_sc}, which is the Router IP address which populates the flow cache shortcut in the Supervisor. Version 6 which is not officially supported by Cisco adds in addition to the version 5 fields {in_encaps, out_encaps, peer_nexthop}, ie the input and output interface encapsulation size, and the IP address of the next hop within the peer. Version 1 exports do not contain a sequence number and therefore should be avoided, although it is safe to store the data as version 1 if the additional fields are not used.

Version 8 IOS NetFlow is a second level flow cache that reduces the data exported from the router. There are currently 11 formats, all of which provide {dFlows, dOctets, dPkts, First, Last} for the key fields.

  8.1 -  Source and Destination AS, Input and Output interface
  8.2 -  Protocol and Port
  8.3 -  Source Prefix and Input interface
  8.4 -  Destination Prefix and Output interface
  8.5 -  Source/Destination Prefix and Input/Output interface
  8.9 -  8.1 + ToS
  8.10 - 8.2 + ToS
  8.11 - 8.3 + ToS
  8.12 - 8.5 + ToS
  8.13 - 8.2 + ToS
  8.14 - 8.3 + ports + ToS

Version 8 CatIOS NetFlow appears to be a less fine grained first level flow cache.

  8.6 - Destination IP, ToS, Marked ToS, 
  8.7 - Source/Destination IP, Input/Output interface, ToS, Marked ToS, 
  8.8 - Source/Destination IP, Source/Destination Port,
        Input/Output interface, ToS, Marked ToS, 

The following programs are included in the flow-tools distribution.

flow-capture - Collect, compress, store, and manage disk space for exported flows from a router.

flow-cat - Concatenate flow files. Typically flow files will contain a small window of 5 or 15 minutes of exports. Flow-cat can be used to append files for generating reports that span longer time periods.

flow-fanout - Replicate NetFlow datagrams to unicast or multicast destinations. Flow-fanout is used to facilitate multiple collectors attached to a single router.

flow-report - Generate reports for NetFlow data sets. Reports include source/destination IP pairs, source/destination AS, and top talkers. Over 50 reports are currently supported.

flow-tag - Tag flows based on IP address or AS #. Flow-tag is used to group flows by customer network. The tags can later be used with flow-fanout or flow-report to generate customer based traffic reports.

flow-filter - Filter flows based on any of the export fields. Flow-filter is used in-line with other programs to generate reports based on flows matching filter expressions.

flow-import - Import data from ASCII or cflowd format.

flow-export - Export data to ASCII or cflowd format.

flow-send - Send data over the network using the NetFlow protocol.

flow-receive - Receive exports using the NetFlow protocol without storing to disk like flow-capture.

flow-gen - Generate test data.

flow-dscan - Simple tool for detecting some types of network scanning and Denial of Service attacks.

flow-merge - Merge flow files in chronoligical order.

flow-xlate - Perform translations on some flow fields.

flow-expire - Expire flows using the same policy of flow-capture.

flow-header - Display meta information in flow file.

flow-split - Split flow files into smaller files based on size, time, or tags.

Mark Fullmer maf@splintered.net

flow-merge by Larry Lidz ellidz@eridu.uchicago.edu

Patches and other contribitions by a list too long to mention here.

flow-tools is avalable at (link to URL http://www.splintered.net/sw/flow-tools) .

A mailing list is maintained at flow-tools@splintered.net

flow-capture(1) flow-cat(1) flow-dscan(1) flow-expire(1) flow-export(1) flow-fanout(1) flow-filter(1) flow-nfilter(1) flow-gen(1) flow-header(1) flow-import(1) flow-merge(1) flow-print(1) flow-receive(1) flow-report(1) flow-send(1) flow-split(1) flow-stat(1) flow-tag(1) flow-xlate(1)