Overview of NetStream

Definition

NetStream is a Huawei-proprietary technology used to collect statistics about network traffic and export the statistics. The statistics can be used for various purposes:

Network management and planning
Enterprise accounting and departmental charging
ISP billing report
Data storage
Data mining for marketing purposes

Object

The rapid development of the Internet provides customers with higher bandwidth and predictable QoS. Meanwhile, with the increase of services and applications, carriers need to provide more fine-grained metering for network management and accounting. As shown in Table 1, traditional methods to collect stream statistics have drawbacks. Developing a technology to answer the preceding demands becomes urgent.

**Table 1** Implementation and drawbacks of the traditional traffic statistics methods
Method	Implementation	Drawback
Based on IP addresses	A counter index is saved in the routing table to count bytes and packets passing through the device.	This method can only calculate packets of limited types.
Based on ACLs	ACLs are used to accurately match packets and then collect statistics about matching packets.	A great number of ACLs need to be configured, and mismatching packets cannot be counted.
Based on SNMP	The SNMP protocol is used to implement the statistics function on a device to collect interface statistics, IP statistics, and ACL matching statistics.	The statistics function is not strong enough. It needs to collect the statistics through continuous polling, which puts heavy load on the CPU and network.
Based on interface mirroring	With interface mirroring, traffic passing through an interface is duplicated and then sent to a special server to implement the statistics function.	The cost is high. A special server is needed to collect statistics, and an additional interface is used. The statistics cannot be performed on the interface that does not support the mirroring function.
Based on the traffic duplication at the physical layer	Traffic is duplicated using the splitter or other devices at the physical layer and then sent to a special server to implement the statistics function.	The cost is high. The special server and device must be purchased.

Benefits

NetStream enables carriers to implement more fine-grained metering for network management and accounting.