Subject: [ipfix-protocol] PROTO-48: flow records in sequence number

From: Benoit Claise <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:42:11 +0100

Dear all,

   PROTO-48: Should the "sequence number" be improved to contain the 
   number of flow records, like proposed in 
   http://ipfix.doit.wisc.edu/archive/2587.html? 

As briefly described in http://ipfix.doit.wisc.edu/archive/2587.html,

    However it might be more useful if we were to track the number of
    records sent rather than the number of IPFIX Messages. We could
    do this by making the sequence number be the sequence number of
    the first record in the IPFIX Message, and instead of incrementing
    it by one on each message, increasing it by the number of
    records in the Message. This gives the number of records lost per
    template in cases when a single template is sent per stream.

    Thus the definition then becomes:

    Sequence Number
    The total number of IPFIX data records received on this stream
    prior to the receipt of this IPFIX Message modulo 2^32. This
    value SHOULD be used by the Collecting Process to identify
    whether any data records have been missed in that stream.

I think this is a good idea! 
If you want to know the number of flow records lost for the template X, simply use a dedicated stream for the flow records related to template X.
Any objections before I insert this proposal?

Regards, Benoit.