NetStream Implementation
Components of a NetStream System
NetStream systems have three components: NetStream data exporter (NDE), NetStream collector (NSC), and NetStream data analyzer (NDA).
NDE
An NDE is a device configured with NetStream that performs the following:- Analyzes and processes network flows.
- Extracts flows that meet statistical conditions.
- Exports the statistics to the NSC.
NSC
An NSC is a program running in Windows or Unix that parses packets from NDEs and saves the statistics to a database. It can collect, filter, and aggregate data exported from multiple NDEs.
NDA
An NDA is a traffic analysis tool that extracts and processes statistics from the NSC and generates a report. This report provides a basis for services such as traffic accounting, network planning, and attack monitoring. The NDA provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for users to easily check and analyze the collected data.
In practice, the NSC and NDA are integrated on a NetStream server.
NetStream Working Mechanism
NetStream systems work as follows:
- An NDE periodically exports detailed data about flows to an NSC.
- The NSC processes the data and sends it to an NDA.
- The NDA analyzes the data for applications such as accounting and network planning.
In most cases, Huawei switches or routers function as NDEs in a NetStream system.
- Samples packets (see NetStream Packet Sampling).
- Creates a flow based on the collected data (see NetStream Flows)
- Ages out the flow (see NetStream Flow Aging).
- Exports the flow statistics (see NetStream Flow Statistics Exporting).