Determining valid NetFlow templates

Q. Is there a way to determine whether an exporter is sending valid NetFlow records to InterMapper Flows?

A. A device needs to export valid NetFlow over UDP with datagrams containing all the necessary fields in order for it to work with Flows. We tend to recommend NetFlow 5 over 9 wherever possible, just because those implementations tend to be more reliable and less likely to be missing important fields like byte count.

Here is what InterMapper Flows needs in a NetFlow 9 template:

IN_BYTES [1]
IN_PKTS [2]
PROTOCOL [4]
L4_SRC_PORT [7]
IPV4_SRC_ADDR [8] or IPV6_SRC_ADDR [27] (NOT both)
L4_DST_PORT [11]
IPV4_DST_ADDR [12] or IPV6_DST_ADDR [28] (NOT both)
LAST_SWITCHED [21]
FIRST_SWITCHED [22]
OUT_BYTES [23]
OUT_PKTS [24]

If Flows receives templates containing those items, and receives valid NetFlow 9 datagrams matching those templates, then they will be accepted and recorded. If it receives any templates missing those items, or datagrams deviating from the last-given templates, it will throw out all affected sessions.