This guide has been superceded by the AVC Solutions Guide, located at Cisco AVC Solution Guide for IOS XE Release 3.9S.

Your software release may not support all the features documented in this module. For the latest caveats and feature information, see Bug Search Tool and the release notes for your platform and software release. To find information about the features documented in this module, and to see a list of the releases in which each feature is supported, see the feature information table at the end of this module.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to www.cisco.com/​go/​cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

• You are familiar with the information in Cisco IOS NetFlow Overview at http:/​/​www.cisco.com/​en/​US/​docs/​ios/​netflow/​configuration/​guide/​ios_​netflow_​ov.html
• You are familiar with the Modular QOS (MQC) information in the Applying QoS Features Using the MQC at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/qos/configuration/guide/qos_mqc.html.
• You are familiar with Classifying Network Traffic Using NBAR in Cisco IOS XE Software http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/ios_xe/qos/configuration/guide/clsfy_traffic_nbar_xe.html.
• You are familiar with Cisco IOS Quality of Service Solutions Command Reference http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11174/prod_command_reference_list.html
• You are familiar with the information in the Cisco Application Visibility and Control Collection Manager User Guide at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6153/products_user_guide_list.html.
• The Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router is configured for IPv4 routing.

Note	More Cisco IOS Flexible NetFlow information resources are available at the Additional References.

• The Cisco Application Visibility and Control feature supports export in Version 9 format only.

The following internal and external components of an Application Visibility and Control network are descibed in detail in this section.

• Internal components (running on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router):

  • Cisco Network-Based Application Recognition
  • Cisco Modular QOS
  • Bandwidth Control
  • Cisco Netflow v9
  • Cisco IOS Flexible Netflow Traffic Records
• External components (running on the separate platform from Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router):

  • Cisco Collection Manager
  • Cisco Insight v3

The core components of the Cisco Application Visibility and Control solution are shown below.

Figure 1. Cisco ASR 1000 Application Visibility and Control Network Components

Cisco NBAR is an essential part of Cisco Application Visibility and Control. In general, Cisco NBAR is can increase application performance through better QoS and policying, and visibility into what applications are using the network by determining that a particular network flow is from a specific application. This is done using various techniques. Upon detection of a flow, a protocol ID is assigned to it. The protocol ID is then used by the solution to determine the appropriate actions on packets belonging to that flow.

Cisco Application Visibility and Control uses the NBAR flow table to store per flow information. It can only act on flows which have an active session in the flow table. The number of flows in the flow table affects the performance and capacity of the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router. You can configure the amount of memory depending on the memory available in your router.

There is also a fixed memory limit. This prevents strain on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router when features other than the Cisco Application Visibility and Control allocate flow table memory. When a fixed memory limit is reached, the Cisco Application Visibility and Control flows supported by the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router may drop below the number you configured.

The maximum and default number of flows and the fixed memory limit supported is show in the following table. The amounts are based on the specific Embedded Service Processor (ESP) in your Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router. See your router specifications to determine the ESP type.

Standard Cisco Modular QOS (MQC) provides the control portion of Cisco Application Visibility and Control. Experience with Cisco QoS is required to implement a solution specific to your network.

• For specific information about configuring QoS with MQC, see Applying QoS Features Using the MQC at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/qos/configuration/guide/qos_mqc.html .
• For information about configuring Cisco QoS, see the Cisco IOS Quality of Service Solutions Configuration Guide at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/qos/configuration/guide/12_4/qos_12_4_book.html

Basic configuration of Cisco QoS for Cisco Application Visibility and Control includes:

• Configuring user defined sub-application IDs or access control lists (ACLs).
• Defining the classes required to apply policy by using application IDs or Categories/Attributes.
• Defining Monitoring action

  • Define the Usage and Transaction Records of Cisco Application Visibility and Control. (See the How to Configure Cisco Application Visibility and Control).
  • Attach the record generation directly under the interface or under a class map.
• Defining a QoS policy
• Defining a monitoring policy

  • Use policy-map for reporting

This guide has been superceded by the AVC Solutions Guide, located at Cisco AVC Solution Guide for IOS XE Release 3.9S.

Application ID—The application identifier is the unique definition of a specific Layer 2 to Layer 7 application. Also referred to as protocol-ID.

Application Recognition— Classification of a flow that ends with an application ID. This can be stateless or stateful. Also called application detection.

Application Session—When a flow is associated with a particular protocol or application, this is referred to as a session. A session often implies a user login and logout, and may include the multiple flows of a particular subscriber.

BiFlow —A BiFlow is composed of packets associated with both the forward direction and the reverse direction between endpoints. Also referred to as a full flow or bi-directional flow. See RFC5101.

Cisco Collection Manager—The Cisco Collection Manager is a set of software modules that runs on a server. It receives and processes NetFlow Records. The processed records are stored in the Cisco Collection Manager database. The database can be either bundled or external.

Cisco Insight v3—Cisco Insight v3 is reporting platform software. It processes the formatted data from the Collection Manager database. It presents customized reports, charts, and statistics of the traffic. Cisco Insight v3 is a Web 2.0 application accessed by using a browser.

Flow —Unidirectional stream of packets between a given source and destination. Source and destination are each defined by a network-layer IP address and transport-layer source and destination port numbers.

MQC —Modular QoS CLI. A CLI structure that lets you create traffic polices and attach them to interfaces. A traffic policy contains a traffic class and one or more QoS features. The QoS features in the traffic policy determine how the classified traffic is treated.

NBAR 2 —Network-Based Application Recognition 2. A classification engine in Cisco IOS software that recognizes a wide variety of applications, including web-based applications and client/server applications that dynamically assign TCP or UDP port numbers. After the application is recognized, the network can invoke specific services for that application. NBAR is a key part of the Cisco Content Networking architecture and works with QoS features to enable you to use network bandwidth efficiently.

NetFlow —Cisco IOS security and accounting feature that maintains per-flow information.

NetFlow sampler —A set of properties that are defined in a NetFlow sampler map that has been applied to at least one physical interface or subinterface.

NetFlow sampler map —The definition of a set of properties (such as the sampling rate) for NetFlow sampling.

NetFlow v9 —NetFlow export format Version 9. A flexible and extensible means for carrying NetFlow records from a network node to a collector. NetFlow Version 9 has definable record types and is self-describing for easier NetFlow Collection Engine configuration.

ToS —type of service. Second byte in the IP header that indicates the desired quality of service for a specific datagram.

Transaction—A set of logical exchanges between endpoints. A typical example of transactions are the series of multiple HTTP GET transactions (each with a different URL) within the same flow. Typically there is one transaction within a flow.

UniFlow—A UniFlow is composed of packets sent from a single endpoint to another single endpoint. Also referred to as a half flow or uni-directional flow. See RFC5101.