Aruba Flow provides an in depth view into which applications are consuming networked resources, when and for which users. When combined with Aruba's network performance analysis capabilities, Aruba Flow enables IT management and staff to dramatically improve their ability to provide:

• Rapid restoration of degraded services;
• Traffic management to optimize resource usage; and
• Identification and elimination of undesirable traffic.

Rapid Restoration of Degraded Services: Very often the first response to degraded service levels is to 'blame the network'. Aruba Flow allows you to quickly examine the traffic flow crossing networked resources that serve affected users. Troughput details for these resources are often sufficient to eliminate the network as the cause of degraded application performance. When the network is the cause, you can quickly pinpoint what devices are involved and what performance parameters need to be addressed.

Traffic Management to Optimize Resource Usage: A common cause of degraded performance is competition for bandwidth between multiple applications. By understanding which applications are being accessed by which users, when and consuming what resources, IT organizations can take a balanced approach to workload policies and class of service implementations.

How it Works: Aruba Flow analyzes flow records from routers and switches that support Cisco IOS NetFlow, enabling extensive IP traffic analysis without the use of probes. Because almost all routers support flow statistics (even non-Cisco devices), the capital investment required to use Aruba's Flow feature is very low.

Network Protocols are based on server ports. Aruba comes with a standard list of Network Protocols that map IP ports to Network Protocol names. Users can also define IP ports (and layer 4 protocols) as Traffic Types, and multiple port numbers can be mapped to the same Traffic Type.

Business Application definitions are based on IP Address/Port pairs. Users can define an Application as one or more pairs. An application can be running on multiple machines and/or multiple ports.

You can drill down into specific hosts, pairs, ports, etc.; this allows you to look for specific traffic (say a virus on port X). Aruba also supports custom reports and queries against flow data.

Aruba shows the following information for any interface, device, or group of interfaces for the selected time period:

• Top N Talkers
• Top N Hosts and Listeners
• Top N Conversations (Host Pairs)
• Top N Network Protocols
• Top N Traffic Types
• Top N Applications

Aruba Flow Data Sheet