flow routing

Rather than routing individual packets, a flow router observes and evaluates flows to gather statistics, including source, destination, amount of traffic "in flight," and stream duration. A flow is a single meaningful end-to-end activity over the network. This evaluation permits the router to prioritize traffic, deliver on quality of service (QoS) requirements, and keep flows from consuming more than some pre-allotted portion of network resources.

A flow router evaluates traffic flows in real time, based on an ID, route, time of receipt and rate of flow, to keep streaming traffic moving as quickly as possible. By contrast, conventional (Layer 3) IP routing does not differentiate between packets. Conventional routing uses a best-effort technique to ensure delivery of incoming traffic to the proper destination on a packet-by-packet basis, and is not sensitive to timing and data rate requirements for streaming data such as voice, video, multimedia and IPTV.

Industry analysts indicate that high-end conventional routers can achieve many of the same advantages touted for flow routing using ancillary queuing, deep-packet inspection, rate shaping and policing, and selective packet discard methods. Nevertheless, flow routing's unique ability to accommodate streaming data types makes it interesting and potentially valuable, especially for networks where such data consumes an appreciable portion of overall bandwidth and resources.

Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts (founder of Anagran and one of the creators of the ARPANET), developed Anagran's flow-based router over a period of seven years at that company and his previous start-up, Caspian.

Learn more about Network Hardware

Do you have something to add to this definition? Let us know. Send your comments to techterms@whatis.com

More resources from around the web: - Dr. Robert's paper, 'The Next Generation of IP – Flow Routing,' is available online. - Network World reports that 'Net pioneer Roberts touts Fast Flow Routing.'

FILE EXTENSION AND FILE FORMAT LIST File Extension and File Format List: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #

RELATED CONTENT 3Com acquisition confirms HP-Cisco battle for China HP's 3Com acquistion ups the ante in the race to provide converged enterprise networks. Juniper to CIOs: Invest in internal cloud computing networks Juniper's new vision calls for CIOs to invest in internal cloud computing – but are they ready? 802.11n wireless APs bring IP video to sprawling Illinois high school Teachers at Lyons Township High School, a school of nearly 4,000 students, are bringing Wi-Fi and IP video to the classroom with wireless tablets and...

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary core router  (SearchNetworking.com) edge router  (SearchNetworking.com)