Genie Networks GenieATM FLB

GenieATM FLB (Flow Load Balancer) is a network flow management component designed to work alongside the GenieATM traffic analysis and DDoS protection platform. It acts as a coordination center that collects, manages, and distributes flow records from routers to multiple downstream collectors and flow analysis systems.

The FLB receives flow data exported from single or multiple routers and redistributes it to GenieATM Collector groups based on user-configurable load balancing and filtering policies. This addresses two common challenges in flow-based network environments: uneven resource utilization across collectors, and flow contention that arises when multiple vendor solutions compete for the same router-exported flow data.

Key operational capabilities include:

• Flow Collection: Ingests flow data in multiple formats including NetFlow, NetStream, sFlow, JFlow, and IPFIX.
• Flow Relay: Forwards received flow packets to collectors from different vendors.
• Load Balancing: Distributes flow record packets across GenieATM Collector groups according to configurable balancing policies.
• Flow Selection (Filtering): Filters and dispatches flow records to specific systems based on configured filtering policies.

From a reliability standpoint, FLB provides high availability by automatically redirecting flow records from a failed collector to a healthy one within the same cluster, eliminating the need for manual failover or dedicated standby devices. It also enables resource savings by allowing administrators to define filter policies that focus collection on specific traffic attributes, reducing unnecessary processing load on GenieATM resources.