ANNOUNCE: FlowScan-1.005 released

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Subject: ANNOUNCE: FlowScan-1.005 released
From: Dave Plonka (plonka@doit.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 19 2000 - 15:50:33 CDT 

FlowScan users,

    I'm pleased to announce the release of FlowScan-1.005. FlowScan
    is a tool to monitor and graph flow information from Cisco
    routers in near real-time.

    Amonst many other things, FlowScan optionally measures and
    graphs traffic for applications such as Napster. A sample of
    what FlowScan can do is at:

       http://wwwstats.net.wisc.edu

Changes in FlowScan-1.005 (since FlowScan-1.003)
    *   A major performance enhancement was done resulting in FlowScan
        being about twice as fast as earlier releases. For instance,
        on a 600 MHz PIII, FlowScan can process about 3400 flows-
        per-second vs. 1700 previously. This was managed by changing
        the CampusIO and SubNetIO report modules to use the Patricia
        Tries algorithm for all IP address-based lookups. The
        Net::Patricia perl module is now required.

    *   The "graphs.mf" template Makefile was improved to introduce some
        new "io" graphs, which show outbound traffic above the axis
        and inbound traffic below. These graphs are based on
        examples by <Alexander.Kunz@nextra.de>. Also, the option to
        produce PNG or GIF files was added to the "graphs.mf"
        makefile.

    *   The `UDPServices' option was added to CampusIO. This directive
        allows one to specify which UDP traffic should be measured,
        similarly to the CampusIO `TCPServices' option.

    *   A new features was added to CampusIO which causes it to write
        flows for "other" applications (i.e. unidentified apps) to
        time-stamped raw flow files in a directory called
        "saved/other" if that directory exists. This simply makes it
        easier to study which flows are not being identified by
        service or application.

    *   A routine was added to CampusIO that periodically purges old
        Real media servers from the hash cache used to identify Real
        media traffic. Previously this cache would grow without
        bound.

    *   Tested cflowd patch with cflowd-2-1-a9.

Availability
    FlowScan is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and
    is available to you at:

       http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/FlowScan/

Mailing Lists
        There are two mailing lists having to do with FlowScan:

    * flowscan
        a general mailing list for FlowScan users.

    * flowscan-announce
        a low-volume, restricted post mailing list to keep FlowScan
        users informed of news regarding FlowScan.

    The lists' respective archives are available at:

       http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/list/flowscan

    and:

       http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka/list/flowscan-announce

    Announcements will be "cross-posted" to both lists, so there's
    no need to join both.

    These lists are hosted by the Division of Information
    Technology's Network Engineering Technology group at the
    University of Wisconsin - Madison. To subscribe to either of
    them, send email to:

       majordomo@net.doit.wisc.edu

    containing either:

       subscribe flowscan

    *or*:

       subscribe flowscan-announce

    You should receive an automatic response that will request that
    you verify your request to become a member of the list, to which
    you must reply with the authentication information there-in.
    Then, in response to your reply, you should receive a welcome
    message. If you have any questions about the administrative
    policies of this list's manager, please contact:

       owner-flowscan@net.doit.wisc.edu

    *or*:

       owner-flowscan-announce@net.doit.wisc.edu

Napster
    If you're interested in Napster specifically, note the graph
    labeled "Well Known Services Mb/s" here:

       http://wwwstats.net.wisc.edu

    or, directly, here:

       http://wwwstats.net.wisc.edu/CampusIO/services_Mbps.gif

    I have written a general document about the Napster portion of
    the measurement at:

       http://net.doit.wisc.edu/data/Napster/

    Some related research on Napster flows is at:

       http://net.doit.wisc.edu/data/flow/size/

Contributors
       Alexander Kunz <Alexander.Kunz@nextra.de>
       Kevin Gannon <kevin@gannons.net>
       John Payne <john@sackheads.org>

Thanks
    I'd like to thank the FlowScan beta testers (since September
    1999), early users, and participants in the FlowScan mailing
    list for their efforts and feedback.

    Also, thanks to Daniel McRobb, Tobi Oetiker, and CAIDA for
    providing the main tools upon which FlowScan is built, namely
    "cflowd" and "RRDTOOL".

Copyright and Disclaimer
        Note that this document is provided `as is'. The information
        in it is not warranted to be correct. Use it at your own
        risk.

           Copyright (c) 2000 Dave Plonka <plonka@doit.wisc.edu>.
           All rights reserved.

        This document may be reproduced and distributed in its
        entirety (including this authorship, copyright, and
        permission notice), provided that no charge is made for the
        document itself.


-- 
plonka@doit.wisc.edu  http://net.doit.wisc.edu/~plonka  ARS:N9HZF  Madison, WI

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