Balancing Information Preservation and Data Volume Reduction: Adaptive Flow Aggregation in Flow Metering Systems.

The critical role of network traffic measurement and analysis extends across a range of network operations, ensuring quality of service, security, and efficient resource management. Despite the ubiquity of flow-level measurement, the escalating size of flow entries presents significant scalability issues. This study explores the implications of adaptive gradual flow aggregation, a solution devised to mitigate these challenges, on flow information distortion. The investigation maintains flow records in buffers of varying aggregation levels, iteratively adjusted based on the changing traffic load mirrored in CPU and memory utilization. Findings underscore the efficiency of adaptive gradual flow aggregation, particularly when applied to a specific buffer, yielding an optimal balance between information preservation and memory utilization. The paper highlights the particular significance of this approach in Internet of Things (IoT) and contrasted environmentstringent resource constraints. Consequently, it casts light on the imperative for adaptability in flow aggregation methods, the impact of these techniques on information distortion, and their influence on network operations. This research offers a foundation for future studies targeting the development of more adaptive and effective flow measurement techniques in diverse and resource-limited network environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]