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Vflow

Enterprise Network Flow Collector (IPFIX, sFlow, Netflow)

From Edgio·Updated June 16, 2026·View on GitHub·

High-performance, scalable and reliable IPFIX, sFlow and Netflow collector (written in pure Golang). The project is written primarily in Go, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 license, first published in 2017. It has gained significant community traction with 1,156 stars and 231 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: cisco, golang, ipfix, ipv4, ipv6.

Latest release: v0.9.1
May 16, 2022View Changelog →

vFlow

Build Status Go Report Card GoDev

High-performance, scalable and reliable IPFIX, sFlow and Netflow collector (written in pure Golang).

Features

  • IPFIX RFC7011 collector
  • sFLow v5 raw header / counters collector
  • Netflow v5 collector
  • Netflow v9 collector
  • Decoding sFlow raw header L2/L3/L4
  • Produce to Apache Kafka, NSQ, NATS
  • Replicate IPFIX and sFlow to 3rd party collector
  • Supports IPv4 and IPv6
  • Prometheus and RESTful APIs monitoring

Alt text

Documentation

Decoded IPFIX data

The IPFIX data decodes to JSON format and IDs are IANA IPFIX element ID

json
{"AgentID":"192.168.21.15","Header":{"Version":10,"Length":420,"ExportTime":1483484642,"SequenceNo":1434533677,"DomainID":32771},"DataSets":[[{"I":8,"V":"192.16.28.217"},{"I":12,"V":"180.10.210.240"},{"I":5,"V":2},{"I":4,"V":6},{"I":7,"V":443},{"I":11,"V":64381},{"I":32,"V":0},{"I":10,"V":811},{"I":58,"V":0},{"I":9,"V":24},{"I":13,"V":20},{"I":16,"V":4200000000},{"I":17,"V":27747},{"I":15,"V":"180.105.10.210"},{"I":6,"V":"0x10"},{"I":14,"V":1113},{"I":1,"V":22500},{"I":2,"V":15},{"I":52,"V":63},{"I":53,"V":63},{"I":152,"V":1483484581770},{"I":153,"V":1483484622384},{"I":136,"V":2},{"I":243,"V":0},{"I":245,"V":0}]]}

Decoded sFlow data

json
{"Version":5,"IPVersion":1,"AgentSubID":5,"SequenceNo":37591,"SysUpTime":3287084017,"SamplesNo":1,"Samples":[{"SequenceNo":1530345639,"SourceID":0,"SamplingRate":4096,"SamplePool":1938456576,"Drops":0,"Input":536,"Output":728,"RecordsNo":3,"Records":{"ExtRouter":{"NextHop":"115.131.251.90","SrcMask":24,"DstMask":14},"ExtSwitch":{"SrcVlan":0,"SrcPriority":0,"DstVlan":0,"DstPriority":0},"RawHeader":{"L2":{"SrcMAC":"58:00:bb:e7:57:6f","DstMAC":"f4:a7:39:44:a8:27","Vlan":0,"EtherType":2048},"L3":{"Version":4,"TOS":0,"TotalLen":1452,"ID":13515,"Flags":0,"FragOff":0,"TTL":62,"Protocol":6,"Checksum":8564,"Src":"10.1.8.5","Dst":"161.140.24.181"},"L4":{"SrcPort":443,"DstPort":56521,"DataOffset":5,"Reserved":0,"Flags":16}}}}],"IPAddress":"192.168.10.0","ColTime": 1646157296}

Decoded Netflow v5 data

json
{"AgentID":"114.23.3.231","Header":{"Version":5,"Count":3,"SysUpTimeMSecs":51469784,"UNIXSecs":1544476581,"UNIXNSecs":0,"SeqNum":873873830,"EngType":0,"EngID":0,"SmpInt":1000},"Flows":[{"SrcAddr":"125.238.46.48","DstAddr":"114.23.236.96","NextHop":"114.23.3.231","Input":791,"Output":817,"PktCount":4,"L3Octets":1708,"StartTime":51402145,"EndTime":51433264,"SrcPort":49233,"DstPort":443,"Padding1":0,"TCPFlags":16,"ProtType":6,"Tos":0,"SrcAsNum":4771,"DstAsNum":56030,"SrcMask":20,"DstMask":22,"Padding2":0},{"SrcAddr":"125.238.46.48","DstAddr":"114.23.236.96","NextHop":"114.23.3.231","Input":791,"Output":817,"PktCount":1,"L3Octets":441,"StartTime":51425137,"EndTime":51425137,"SrcPort":49233,"DstPort":443,"Padding1":0,"TCPFlags":24,"ProtType":6,"Tos":0,"SrcAsNum":4771,"DstAsNum":56030,"SrcMask":20,"DstMask":22,"Padding2":0},{"SrcAddr":"210.5.53.48","DstAddr":"103.22.200.210","NextHop":"122.56.118.157","Input":564,"Output":802,"PktCount":1,"L3Octets":1500,"StartTime":51420072,"EndTime":51420072,"SrcPort":80,"DstPort":56108,"Padding1":0,"TCPFlags":16,"ProtType":6,"Tos":0,"SrcAsNum":56030,"DstAsNum":13335,"SrcMask":24,"DstMask":23,"Padding2":0}]}

Decoded Netflow v9 data

json
{"AgentID":"10.81.70.56","Header":{"Version":9,"Count":1,"SysUpTime":357280,"UNIXSecs":1493918653,"SeqNum":14,"SrcID":87},"DataSets":[[{"I":1,"V":"0x00000050"},{"I":2,"V":"0x00000002"},{"I":4,"V":2},{"I":5,"V":192},{"I":6,"V":"0x00"},{"I":7,"V":0},{"I":8,"V":"10.81.70.56"},{"I":9,"V":0},{"I":10,"V":0},{"I":11,"V":0},{"I":12,"V":"224.0.0.22"},{"I":13,"V":0},{"I":14,"V":0},{"I":15,"V":"0.0.0.0"},{"I":16,"V":0},{"I":17,"V":0},{"I":21,"V":300044},{"I":22,"V":299144}]]}

Supported platform

  • Linux
  • Windows

Build

Given that the Go Language compiler is installed, you can build it with:

go get github.com/EdgeCast/vflow/vflow
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/EdgeCast/vflow

make build
or
cd vflow; go build 

Installation

You can download and install pre-built debian package as below (RPM and Linux binary are available).

dpkg -i vflow-0.9.0-x86_64.deb

Once you installed you need to configure the below files, for more information check configuration guide:

/etc/vflow/vflow.conf
/etc/vflow/mq.conf

You can start the service by the below:

service vflow start

Kubernetes

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/EdgeCast/vflow/blob/master/kubernetes/deploy.yaml

Docker

docker run -d -p 2181:2181 -p 9092:9092 spotify/kafka
docker run -d -p 4739:4739 -p 4729:4729 -p 6343:6343 -p 8081:8081 -e VFLOW_KAFKA_BROKERS="172.17.0.1:9092" mehrdadrad/vflow

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License")

Contribute

Welcomes any kind of contribution, please follow the next steps:

  • Fork the project on github.com.
  • Create a new branch.
  • Commit changes to the new branch.
  • Send a pull request.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from Edgio/vflow via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/21/2026