Streaming Telemetry is not a new term anymore, yet adoption is still in very early stages. In short, it is a technology that provides a new approach for collecting network device metrics in which data is streamed from the devices continuously, as opposed to periodic polling like SNMP. Streaming telemetry is a more scalable and flexible way of exposing metrics from your infrastructure.

Our recent blog post on the subject explains what Streaming Telemetry is, discusses how to maximize the value of it, and shares Kentik’s vision of leveraging this new technology.

We believe that Streaming Telemetry can improve efficiency for network operators in use cases like detecting problems, troubleshooting issues, planning for networking capacity and much more.

Kentik ingests streaming telemetry data at scale, the same way we handle other types of data we ingest like NetFlow. Then with enrichment and machine learning, we surface potential problems, using both built-in and custom user-defined detection methods. We help network teams swiftly and accurately respond to incidents, proactively recognize and prevent issues from impacting service and business, and allow them to focus on optimization rather than firefighting.

The first phase of Kentik’s support for streaming telemetry, offers:

• Direct collection of telemetry data
• Interface classification support
• Juniper “gNMI” JTI with UI support
• Interface metrics with including metrics: Input/Output Unicast/Multicast/Broadcast BitRate/Packets/Errors/Discards (see screenshot below)

As an example, we can now use streaming telemetry data to view statistics and visualizations of network ingress and egress traffic, via which interfaces, with connectivity types and so on.

In subsequent phases, we will support more vendors (e.g., Cisco Dial-Out for ASR), add full interface metrics, provide more sample interval options, provide full alerting on metrics and state changes, and much more.

Please contact our Customer Success team if you want to get a preview of this early version of Streaming Telemetry support.