The wireless Flexible NetFlow infrastructure supports the following:
- Flexible NetFlow Version 9.0
- User-based rate limiting
- Microflow policing
- Voice and video flow monitoring
- Reflexive access control list (ACL)
Microflow Policing and User-Based Rate Limiting
Microflow policing associates a 2-color 1-rate policer and related drop statistics to each flow present in the NetFlow table.
When the flow mask comprises all packet fields, this functionality is known as microflow policing. When the flow mask comprises
either source or destination only, this functionality is known as user-based rate limiting.
Voice and Video Flow Monitoring
Voice and video flows are full flow mask-based entries. The ASIC provides the flexibility to program the policer parameters,
share policers across multiple flows and rewrite the IP address and Layer 4 port numbers of these flows.
Note |
For dynamic entries, the NetFlow engine will use the policer parameters that are derived for the flow based on the policy
(ACL/QoS-based policies). Dynamic entries cannot share policer across multiple flows.
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Reflexive ACL
Reflexive ACLs allow IP packets to be filtered based on upper-layer session information. The ACLs allow outbound traffic and
limit inbound traffic in response to the sessions that originate inside the trusted network. The reflexive ACLs are transparent
to the filtering mechanism until a data packet that matches the reflexive entry activates it. At this time, a temporary ACL
entry is created and added to the IP-named access lists. The information obtained from the data packet to generate the reflexive
ACL entry is permit/deny bit, the source IP address and port, the destination IP address, port, and the protocol type. During
reflexive ACL entry evaluation, if the protocol type is either TCP or UDP, then the port information must match exactly. For
other protocols, there is no port information to match. After this ACL is installed, the firewall is then opened for the reply
packets to pass through. At this time, a potential hacker could have access to the network behind the firewall. To narrow
this window, an idle timeout period can be defined. However, in the case of TCP, if two FIN bits or an RST is detected, the
ACL entry can be removed.