ipfixcol2-tcp-input(7)

✨ NAME ✨

ipfixcol2-tcp-input — the TCP input plugin bestie 💅 (yes it's a section 7 manual page for the IPFIXcol collector, iykyk)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so picture this: this plugin is out here receiving IPFIX messages over the TCP transport protocol, pulling them in from one or more exporters, and then handing them straight over to the collector. That's the whole job. And it does it beautifully. ✨

You can run multiple instances of this plugin at the same time, no problem — but heads up bestie, they must listen on different ports or different local IP addresses. No sharing, that's the rule, periodt. 🚫

Now, unlike UDP (love her but she's messy 💀), TCP is a reliable transport protocol, which means exporters can actually detect when the collector connects or dips out. So the whole saga of "templates need retransmission" and "there's an initial period where we literally cannot interpret flow records" — yeah, none of that applies here. Not a thing. We ate that problem. 🍽️

Also!! Received IPFIX messages can be compressed using LZ4 stream compression. The compression gets enabled over on the exporter's side, and the plugin just... notices it. Automatically. No config, no stress, it just knows. Main character detector energy. 👑

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🎀 EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION 🎀

Here's what it looks like in the wild, copy-paste ready:

<input>
    <name>TCP input</name>
    <plugin>tcp</plugin>
    <params>
        <localPort>4739</localPort>
        <localIPAddress></localIPAddress>
    </params>
</input>

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💖 PARAMETERS 💖

These ones are the mandatory girlies — you need them:

• localPort — the local port this plugin listens on. That's it, that's the vibe. [default: 4739]
• localIPAddress — the local IPv4/IPv6 address that the TCP input plugin listens on. If you leave this element empty, the plugin just binds to all available network interfaces (she's flexible like that 🫶). And plot twist: this element can occur multiple times — one IP address per occurrence — so you can manually hand-pick multiple interfaces if you want. [default: empty]

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🌸 NOTES 🌸

Small lil note for the tech girlies: the LZ4 compression uses a special format that's compatible with ipfixproble <https://github.com/CESNET/ipfixprobe>. Slay. 💅

No cap, that link spelling is exactly how it appears in the source — keep it as-is bestie, don't "fix" it, we don't do that here. 🙈

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Lukáš Huták (lukas.hutak@cesnet.cz), Petr Velan (petr.velan@cesnet.cz)

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright © 2018 CESNET, z.s.p.o.

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you're officially an ipfixcol2-tcp-input expert now 🧚✨ this was version 2.0 from back on 2018-09-20, authored under the ipfixcol2-tcp-input(7) IPFIXcol collector era — iconic behavior, no notes, bye! 💖🎀🦋