DELL N3000 User Manual

Monitoring Switch Traffic

monitored devices. sFlow datagrams forward sampled traffic statistics to the 

sFlow Collector for analysis. You can specify up to eight different sFlow 

receivers to which the switch sends sFlow datagrams.

The advantages of using sFlow are:

• It is possible to monitor all ports of the switch continuously, with no 

impact on the distributed switching performance.

• Minimal memory/CPU is required. Samples are not aggregated into a flow-

table on the switch; they are forwarded immediately over the network to 

the sFlow receiver.

• The sFlow system is tolerant to packet loss in the network because 

statistical modeling means the loss is equivalent to a slight change in the 

sampling rate.

• sFlow receiver can receive data from multiple switches, providing a real-

time synchronized view of the whole network.

• The receiver can analyze traffic patterns based on protocols found in the 

headers (e.g., TCP/IP, IPX, Ethernet, AppleTalk…). This alleviates the 

need for a layer 2 switch to decode and understand all protocols.