Scalable and Robust Decentralized IP Traffic Flow Collection and Analysis (SCRIPT)

Abstract

As the IP traffic observed on network operator’s backbones keeps increasing year by year, the analysis of NetFlow data metered for this traffic becomes a burden for centralized traffic monitoring solutions. Thus, SCRIPT proposes a decentralized accounting architecture and framework for NetFlow storage and analysis, which is flexible to allow for the development of distributed traffic analysis applications. SCRIPT mechanisms organize multiple PCs or AXP (Application Extension Platform) cards in an analysis network and route NetFlow records according to rules imposed by the analysis application. In turn, the evaluation of the prototype has shown that (a) this approach allows for a linear increase of the number of NetFlow records, which can be processed with the number of nodes in the SCRIPT deployment network, and (b) deploying SCRIPT on router-embedded AXP cards is improving an already existing infrastructure with the capability of storage and processing of NetFlow records.