Flow reporting should have the options to be more device agnostic and have more dynamic selection capabilities, other than the selection of filters that are done within the widget definition.

The ideal option would be a pop-up selection window (selecting something where the variables are currently placed). Provides options such as:

1. Select a client/server role and then select from a list such as a network segment or host grouping that is to be included or excluded.
2. Select from a list such as a network segment or host grouping that is to be included or excluded as the counterpart to the first selection.
3. Select from a list such as an application or “protocol mapping / service mapping / category mapping” that is to be included or excluded as the counterpart to the first selection.

The above will allow the reporting to show (utilization, breakdown etc) for the following examples. Site here can be collection of subnets (network segment), representing hosts, region, BU, country etc. (that could even be based around metadata).

• What are the sites or users that are targeting a set of hosts / applications?

• For a group of hosts / applications, what sites or users are consuming the traffic?

• Traffic between sites e.g. London and Tokyo

• What are the topN for a site or selection of hosts

In these basic examples, the user does not need to know what device grouping, device or interface to select – only cares for example about host, subnet and application groupings that are meaningful / descriptive.

Flow reporting should also have the option for results to be further refined based on the “column headings” of a generated report (i.e. based on the Flow View selected). Whilst this does exist within the widget settings it's lost to a Report Consumer if a filter hasn’t been created as part of the widget configuration which makes this very limiting.