How to Plan for Flow Accounting

You use the IPQoS flowacct module to keep track of traffic flows for billing or network management purposes. Use the following procedure to determine if your QoS policy should include flow accounting.

1. Does your company offer SLAs to customers?

   If the answer is yes, then you should use flow accounting. Review the SLAs to determine what types of network traffic your company wants to bill customers to use. Then review your QoS policy to determine which classes select traffic to be billed.

2. Are there applications that might need monitoring or testing to avoid network problems?

   If the answer is yes, consider using flow accounting to observe the behavior of these applications. Review your QoS policy to determine the classes you have assigned to traffic that requires monitoring.

3. Mark Y in the flow-accounting column for each class that requires flow accounting in your QoS planning template.

Where to Go From Here?