ipfixcol2-viewer-output(7)

✨ NAME ✨

ipfixcol2-viewer-output — the Viewer output plugin, bestie 💅 (it lives in the ipfixcol2 collector's manual, section 7)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so picture this: the plugin takes your IPFIX Messages and turns them into plain text, then prints them straight to standard output. That's it. That's the whole job. And it ate. 👑

The main goal here is showing you what's actually inside the IPFIX Messages you received, but in a form that a human being can read without crying. So every IPFIX Message gets broken down into IPFIX Sets, and every IPFIX Set gets broken down even further into (Options) Template/Data records, and so on, down and down, like those little Russian dolls but make it packet data. 🪆

The fields of the Data records get formatted according to the data type that's expected — but only if their corresponding Information Element definitions are actually known to the collector. Which is lowkey a feature, because it means you can use the output to figure out which Information Element definitions are missing. Missing-definition detective work, we love to see it. 🔍

Biflow records and structured data types? Also supported. Also appropriately formatted. Slay. ✨

⚠️ BUT — important, bestie — the output is not supposed to be parsed any further by anything. The format can change in the future, no cap. So if you're actually trying to process Data Records, go look at other plugins instead, like JSON, UniRec, etc. Those are the ones built for that. This one is for your eyeballs only. 👀

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🎀 EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION 🎀

Here's what it looks like in your config, cute and tiny:

<output>
    <name>Viewer output</name>
    <plugin>viewer</plugin>
    <params/>
</output>

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💜 PARAMETERS 💜

ngl, there are none. This plugin does not support parameters. Periodt. 💀

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🌸 EXAMPLE OUTPUT 🌸

Below is example output for anonymized IPFIX Messages. Heads up though — the message structure and the available fields of a Data Record vary from exporter to exporter, so yours is gonna look different. Don't panic. 🙈

IPFIX Message header:
    Version:      10
    Length:       176
    Export time:  1455534348
    Sequence no.: 0
    ODID:         1

Set Header:
    Set ID: 2 (Template Set)
    Length: 160
Template Record (#1)
    Template ID: 256
    Field Count: 27
    EN: 0  ID: 1    Size: 4  |  iana:octetDeltaCount
    EN: 0  ID: 2    Size: 4  |  iana:packetDeltaCount
    EN: 0  ID: 152  Size: 8  |  iana:flowStartMilliseconds
    EN: 0  ID: 153  Size: 8  |  iana:flowEndMilliseconds
    EN: 0  ID: 10   Size: 2  |  iana:ingressInterface
    EN: 0  ID: 60   Size: 1  |  iana:ipVersion
    EN: 0  ID: 8    Size: 4  |  iana:sourceIPv4Address
    EN: 0  ID: 12   Size: 4  |  iana:destinationIPv4Address
    EN: 0  ID: 5    Size: 1  |  iana:ipClassOfService
    EN: 0  ID: 192  Size: 1  |  iana:ipTTL
    EN: 0  ID: 4    Size: 1  |  iana:protocolIdentifier
    EN: 0  ID: 7    Size: 2  |  iana:sourceTransportPort
    EN: 0  ID: 11   Size: 2  |  iana:destinationTransportPort
    ... <~ output shortened for clarity ~> ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------
IPFIX Message header:
    Version:      10
    Length:       216
    Export time:  1455534348
    Sequence no.: 0
    ODID:         1

Set Header:
    Set ID: 256 (Data Set)
    Length: 200
    Template ID: 256
Data Record (#1) [Length: 95]:
    EN: 0  ID: 1    iana:octetDeltaCount          : 76 octets
    EN: 0  ID: 2    iana:packetDeltaCount         : 1 packets
    EN: 0  ID: 152  iana:flowStartMilliseconds    : 2016-02-15T11:05:48.150Z
    EN: 0  ID: 153  iana:flowEndMilliseconds      : 2016-02-15T11:05:48.150Z
    EN: 0  ID: 10   iana:ingressInterface         : 1
    EN: 0  ID: 60   iana:ipVersion                : 4
    EN: 0  ID: 8    iana:sourceIPv4Address        : 209.246.218.165
    EN: 0  ID: 12   iana:destinationIPv4Address   : 93.113.168.59
    EN: 0  ID: 5    iana:ipClassOfService         : 0
    EN: 0  ID: 192  iana:ipTTL                    : 122 hops
    EN: 0  ID: 4    iana:protocolIdentifier       : 17
    EN: 0  ID: 7    iana:sourceTransportPort      : 62299
    EN: 0  ID: 11   iana:destinationTransportPort : 53
    ... <~ output shortened for clarity ~> ...

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💖 AUTHOR 💖

• Jan Kala (xkalaj01@stud.fit.vutbr.cz)
• Lukáš Huták (lukas.hutak@cesnet.cz)

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2018-2019 CESNET, z.s.p.o.

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okay that's the whole page bestie, hope it helped 🫶

this was version 2.0, dated 2019-02-20, from the ipfixcol2-viewer-output(7) page — k bye, go read your flows 💖✨🎀