What is the main reason to recommend NetFLow?

While IPFIX (the open standard derived from NetFlow v9) improves multivendor support, NetFlow itself is primarily a Cisco feature and multivendor compatibility is not the primary justification for recommending it.

NetFlow records per-flow data including source and destination IP addresses, ports, protocol, ToS byte, input interface, and byte/packet counts, providing a level of traffic detail that SNMP polling cannot match. This per-flow visibility makes NetFlow the ideal tool for detailed traffic profiling, security forensics, application-level reporting, and anomaly detection where granularity is the core requirement.

Network device utilization metrics such as CPU load, memory, and interface throughput are more efficiently and accurately gathered using SNMP, which is purpose-built for device health monitoring.

Capacity planning relies on aggregate throughput and utilization trends that are better sourced from SNMP-based performance management platforms rather than per-flow NetFlow records.