Port Mirroring for Sampling Measurement of Network Flows

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a data processing system comprising a network forwarding device and a collector computing device, causes the data processing system to:

• sample data packets of a data flow through a normal port of the network forwarding device, wherein the sampling is performed at least by configuring the network forwarding device to implement port mirroring of the normal port to a designated mirror port of the network forwarding device;
• forward sampled data packets, copied to the mirror port by virtue of the port mirroring, to the collector computing device;
• process, by the collector computing device, the sampled data packets to analyze the data flow through the normal port of the network forwarding device;
• and
• perform, by the collector computing device, an operation based on results of the analysis.

A system comprising:

• a network forwarding device;
• and
• a collector computing device communicatively coupled to the network forwarding device, wherein the network forwarding device is configured to:
• sample data packets of a data flow through a normal port of the network forwarding device, wherein the sampling is performed at least by configuring the network forwarding device to implement port mirroring of the normal port to a designated mirror port of the network forwarding device;
• and
• forwarding sampled data packets, copied to the mirror port by virtue of the port mirroring, to the collector computing device, and wherein the collector computing devices is configured to:
• process the sampled data packets to analyze the data flow through the normal port of the network forwarding device;
• and
• perform, by the collector computing device, an operation based on results of the analysis.