A flow is a customized way of categorizing network packets based on a single attribute or a combination of attributes. Flows enable you to further allocate network resources. For an overview of flows, see Network Resource Management by Using Flows.
Using flows for managing network resources involves the following steps:
Creating the flow.
A flow is created based on a single attribute or a combination of attributes that are derived from the information in a packet's header.
You can use one of the following attributes to organize packet traffic into a flow:
Differentiated Services Field (DS Field) attribute, which is used for QoS in IPv6 packets only. For more information, see Managing IP Quality of Service in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
You can use one of the following combination of attributes to organize packet traffic into a flow:
Transport protocol name (UDP, TCP or SCTP) with the local application port number (for example, port 21 for FTP).
Transport protocol name (UDP, TCP or SCTP) with the remote application port number.
Transport protocol name (UDP, TCP or SCTP) with the local IP address and the local application port number. This combination of attributes can further include the remote IP address with the remote application port number: Transport protocol name (UDP, TCP or SCTP) + local IP address + local application port number [+ remote IP address [+ remote application port number]].
A flow can be based on only one of these attribute combinations. For example, you can create a flow according to the transport protocol and port that is being used, such as TCP port 21 for FTP, or according to IP addresses, such as packets from a specific source IP address. As the most general case, you can create a flow by specifying the transport protocol, local or remote IP address, and local or remote port. Also, all the flows belonging to the same link must have the same combination of attributes.
Customizing the flow's use of resources by setting properties that pertain to network resources. Currently, bandwidth and priority properties can be associated with flows.
For more information, see Configuring Flows.