Collection and monitoring methods

Viewing network traffic can be done in several ways, such as the following:

• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
• NetFlow and IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
• Wireshark and network analysis tools
• Streaming telemetry

Let's look at the information we can get from each one of them.

SNMP

Although considered by some as obsolete, SNMP is still by far the most popular network management tool. SNMP is based on a manager-agent model, where a management system (a manager in SNMP terminology) monitors devices by receiving information from the SNMP agent interacting with the communications device.

There are two ways that the SNMP manager (the management system) receives information from the agent, outlined as follows:

• SNMP polling: This refers to when the SNMP manager monitors the agents on communication devices.
• SNMP traps: This refers to when an agent on a communication device discovers a problem, and...