Internet DRAFT - draft-zhou-ipfix-variance
draft-zhou-ipfix-variance
INTERNET-DRAFT C. Zhou
Intended Status: Informational H. Zheng
Expires: September 14, 2017 Huawei
March 13, 2017
IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Information Elements Extension
for Flow Variance Information
draft-zhou-ipfix-variance-00
Abstract
This document proposes several new Information Elements for the IP
Flow Information Export (IPFIX) protocol, which are used to export
variance information about the flow, regarding the sizes of the
packets sampled. This kind of information is helpful to form a
statistical view of the flow.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Copyright and License Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Information Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
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1 Introduction
The current set of IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Information
Elements [IANA-IPFIX] is extensive. However, it contains no means to
export information about the average size of packets in a flow, as
well as the variance of the pack sizes. Having those information not
only helps gain more insight of the flow from a statistical view, but
also facilitates the detection of any anomaly traffic.
Below are the new Information Elements being introduced:
o ipTotalLengthSampleMean
o ipTotalLengthSampleVariance
The definitions of the Information Elements are given in Section 2.
Another reason to add these Information Elements is that it may not
be practical to export every sampled packet's size and then calculate
the mean and variance offline. For the sake of saving the data size
to export, it is better to calculate mean and variance at the
Observation Point and export only the calculated values. Algorithms
such as [RunningVariance] exist to calculate mean and variance
online, in a single pass, without having to save sizes of the sampled
packets.
1.1 Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
This document also makes use of the same terminology and definitions
as Section 2 of [RFC5470].
2 Information Elements
Following the guidelines provided by [RFC 7013], the definitions of
the new Information Elements are given below:
Name: ipTotalLengthSampleMean
Description:
The calculated mean of the ipTotalLength values of the sampled
packets in a flow.
Abstract Data Type: unsigned64
ElementId: TBD
Status: current
Units: octets
Reference:
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See RFC 5102 for the definition of ipTotalLength.
Name: ipTotalLengthSampleVariance
The calculated variance of the ipTotalLength values of the sampled
packets in a flow.
The result of the calculation should be converted to unsigned64.
If the result is too large to be contained in an unsigned64, then
0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF should be set as the value instead.
Description:
Abstract Data Type: unsigned64
ElementId: TBD
Status: current
Reference:
See RFC 5102 for the definition of ipTotalLength.
3 Security Considerations
For this extension to the IPFIX protocol, the same security
considerations as for the IPFIX protocol apply [RFC7011].
4 IANA Considerations
The Information Elements defined Section 2 are expected to be added
to the IANA's IPFIX registry [IANA-IPFIX]. The 'TBD' values of the
ElementIds should be replaced by IANA for assigned numbers.
5 References
5.1 Normative References
[RFC7013] Trammell, B. and B. Claise, "Guidelines for Authors and
Reviewers of IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)
Information Elements", BCP 184, RFC 7013, September 2013.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC5470] Sadasivan, G., Brownlee, N., Claise, B., and J. Quittek,
"Architecture for IP Flow Information Export", RFC 5470,
March 2009.
5.2 Informative References
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[IANA-IPFIX]
IANA, "IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Entities",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipfix>.
[RunningVariance]
John D. Cook, Accurately computing running variance
<https://www.johndcook.com/blog/standard_deviation/>.
Authors' Addresses
Chong Zhou
Huawei
156 Beiqing Road, M06 Shichuang Technology Demonstration Park
Haidian, Beijing 100094
China
Email: mr.zhouchong@huawei.com
Hui Zheng (Marvin)
Huawei
101 Ruanjian Avenue, Nanjing, China
EMail: marvin.zhenghui@huawei.com
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