Exporter Traffic vs Traffic Pattern

This article helps in understanding the differences between Exporter Traffic and Traffic Pattern and what are they used for.

	Exporter Traffic	Traffic Pattern
Setup	provided by default	requires custom setup
Based on	physical infrastructure	logical definition
Nodes	exporters and interfaces	Traffic Patterns, Subnet Sets and Subnets
Monitors	traffic on routers, L3 switches and interfaces	specific (custom defined) traffic
Analysis focus	whole traffic on specific physical infrastructure	specific traffic between two networks
Level of expertise	fast setup and easy to understand	complex setup and harder to understand

In general you will use:

• Exporter Traffic when you are interested in monitoring the bandwidth of an interface or exporter (whole traffic passing through the physical infrastructure)
• Traffic Patterns to isolate a specific type of traffic (traffic via specific ports, protocols, AS etc.): YouTube Traffic, certain service traffic, blocked traffic etc.
• Traffic Patterns with Subnet Sets to monitor whole or specific traffic per logical unit: company departments, regional company offices, member organisations, data centre traffic etc.