Getting Started
First Time Setup
Getting Started With Jobs
Getting Started with Ticketing
Setting Sonar up for Billing
Getting Started with Accounts
Getting Started with Inventory
Baseline Configuration
User Specific Resources
How To: Using Sonar's Customer Portal
Accounts
Account Types: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Statuses: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Management View: Overview
Scheduled Events: Overview & Use Cases
Notes & Tasks: Best Practices & Use Cases
Child Accounts: Best Practices & How Tos
Disconnecting an Account
FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Filings: How Sonar Can Help
Account List View: Overview
Specify Account ID upon Creation
Lead Intake Form Processing
Account Groups: Overview & Example Use Cases
CPUC Fixed Broadband Deployment by Address
Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Usage
FCC Data Exports: General Overview and Usage
Creating a New Account
Billing
Setting up Bank Account & Credit Card Processors
Billing Settings
Billing Defaults
Taxes Setup
General Ledger Codes: Overview
Services: Overview
Building a Data Service
Building Packages
Delinquency Billing Best Practices
Accounts in Vacation Mode
Batch Payments & Deposit Slips: Overview
Creating Discounts for Services and Packages
Setting Up Payment Methods and Taking Payments
Canadian ACH tool
Printed Invoice Batches: Overview
Delinquency Exclusions: Overview and Use Cases
Multi-Month Billing & Multi-Month Services
How to Take Bank Account Payments
Email Invoice Batch: Overview
Manual Transactions
ACH Batching: Overview
Billing Calculator
General Transactions: Best Practices
Usage Based Billing Policies: Overview and Usage
How to: Adding a Service to an Account
Usage Based Billing Policy Free Periods: Overview and Usage
Using Tax Exemptions - How To
Avalara: Overview & Setup
Print to Mail
Communication
Setting up an Outbound Email Domain
Triggered Messages: Setup
Call Logs: General Best Practices
Using the Mass Message Tool
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Phone Number Types: Overview and Use Cases
Email Variables & Conditions
Communication Tools: Overview
Trigger Explanations
Companies
How to: Setting Up a Company in Sonar
Managing Multiple Companies in Sonar: Best Practices
Rebranding your Sonar Instance
Financial
Contract Templates
Invoice Attachment Use Cases & PDF Examples
Invoice Messages: Overview & Use Cases
Invoices in Sonar: Examples, Creation & Contents
Integrations
Calix Integration: Overview
GPS Tracking Providers: Overview
Webhooks in Sonar: Basic PHP Example
How to Connect Cambium to your Sonar Instance
iCalendar Integration
External Marketing Providers
The Sonar Field Tech App
How to Connect Preseem to your Sonar System
Tower Coverage Integration: Overview
GoCardless Integration: Overview & Setup
Vetro FiberMap Integration: Overview
How to: Using Webhooks in Sonar
Inventory
Setup of Inventory: Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees
Inventory List View: Overview
Inventory Model Management: General Overview
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Jobs
Job Types: Best Practices
Setting Up Schedules General Overview
Applying Task Templates to Jobs
Scheduling Week View: Overview
Example Jobs & Templates
Scheduling How-to: Creating and Booking a Job
Geofences: Overview
Edit Job Options
Jobs and Scheduling: Overview
Mapping
Misc.
Monitoring
Building a Monitoring Template
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Building Alerting Rotations
Poller Troubleshooting
Networking
IP Assignments & Sonar
MikroTik: Setting Up a Sonar Controlled DHCP Server
IPAM: Basic Setup
MikroTik as an Inline Device: Integration With Sonar
MikroTik: Controlling Speeds
MikroTik: Controlling Access
Setting Up CoA Proxy
RADIUS: Building Reply Attributes
Data Usage Available Methods
Pulse, Polling, and PHP
Using Multiple Network Devices in Sonar
IPAM: Overview
Cable Modem Provisioning
LTE Integration
Assigning RADIUS Addresses
Controlling Customer Speeds with Sonar: General Overview
Sonar Flow
RADIUS: Build-Out & Integration with Sonar
Network Dashboard: Overview
Being Cloud Native
Netflow Integration: Overview
Building a Device Mapper
Sonar IP Addressing
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
DHCP Delivery
Assigning an IP Address Using Sonar's IPAM: How to
Network Sites: Management View Overview
Building RADIUS Groups
Building Address Lists
Finding your OIDs
Purchase Orders
Security
User Role Creation & Best Practices
Removing a Terminated Employee In Sonar
Password Policy In Depth
Application Firewall: General Overview and Best Practices
Users: Overview
Role Creation using GraphiQL
System
How to Best Use Global Search
How Your Data is Backed Up
How To Use GraphiQL to Understand the Sonar API
Frequently Used Terms
Sonar's Rich Text Editor
Mutations in the Sonar API
Notification Preferences
API Calls Using Third Party Applications: Personal Access Tokens
Auth0: Overview
The New Sonar API
Introducing the New Sidebar
Upgrading your Ubuntu OS - Customer Portal Upgrades
A Deeper Dive into the New Sonar API
Consuming the Sonar API
Filtering: Simple vs Advanced
Browser Compatibility and Minimum Hardware Requirements for Sonar
REST API Wrappers for V1 Compatibility
User Profile: Your Personal User Settings
SMS Notifications
Dynamic Time Zones in Sonar
System Settings: Overview
Troubleshooting the Customer Portal
Controlling Your Landing Page: Personal Preferences
Interacting with Files via the API
Getting Your Data into Sonar
Customizing Your Customer Portal
Release Notes
Reporting
Understanding Sonar Reports
How To Enhance Your Reporting With Custom Field Data
Report Licenses
Sonar's Business Intelligence: Overview
Ticketing
Ticketing: Overview
Canned Replies Examples & Templates
Canned Reply Categories
Inbound Mailboxes Example Build
Ticket Categories Best Practices & Example Build
Exploring Ticket Groups
Using Parent Tickets
How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack
Advanced Ticketing Features
Working With the Sonar Team & Additional Resources
Sonar's Security Practices & Certifications
Sonar and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Technical Security Overview
CyberSecure Canada Certification
Sonar's Security Strategies
Best Practices for Fast Tracking a Support Request
How Sonar Bills Your Instance
The Sonar Status Page
The Sonar Community Forum
Feedback Portal / Suggest a Feature
Sonar Casts Table of Contents
How to Request Termination of your Sonar Instance
Submitting Bugs vs. Feature Requests
Third Party Customer Support Referrals
Learning with Sonar: Tools and Resources
Voice
Sonar Billing
Table of Contents
- All Categories
- Networking
- Netflow Integration: Overview
Netflow Integration: Overview
Updated
by Mitchell Paul-Soumis
Read Time: 4 mins
What is Netflow, and What are Netflow Endpoints?
NetFlow is a catch-all term for a process originally developed by Cisco to respond to a need to gather information on a network's traffic flow and volume. This technology was further developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to become "Internet Protocol Flow Information eXport" or "IPFIX". Netflow works by capturing data from Netflow Endpoints and submitting that data to a Netflow Collector.
Sonar acts as a software-based Netflow Collector and serves to store the data sent to your instance by the Netflow Endpoints. Many network devices support Netflow, or some variant of it (e.g., IPFIX.) While there are a few variants, this documentation will refer to Netflow generally – just be aware that this endpoint supports Netflow version v1, v5, v7, v9, and IPFIX.
Supporting Netflow in Sonar is simple. You configure a Netflow endpoint in Sonar and specify the IP addresses you wish to allow Netflow data to be delivered from. You then configure your device to deliver Netflow data to Sonar, and Sonar will begin matching the IP addresses in the flows to your customers and storing data usage for them.
Creating a Netflow Endpoint
In order to create a new Netflow Endpoint, perform the below steps:
- Navigate to Settings > Networking > Netflow Endpoints, and then click on Create Netflow Endpoint:
- Next, supply a name to the Endpoint and select whether or not it will operate in Whitelist Mode:If the Whitelist Mode option is enabled, you must build up a list of allowed subnets using the Create Netflow Whitelist action. Only data originating from or destined for IPs in the whitelist will be recorded when Whitelist is enabled. Wherever possible, you should disable this option and only deliver from a point where the data sent can all be used. Enabling whitelisting requires the Sonar Netflow parser to evaluate each unique source or destination IP twice – once to see if it fits into the whitelist, and once to see if it is legitimate customer traffic. This will cause Netflow parsing to take longer and may cause performance issues with very large data sets. You can help minimize this by either disabling whitelisting or keeping your list of whitelisted networks minimal.
- With the Endpoint created, expand the action dropdown and select Create Netflow Allowed Subnet:
- This will open the creation modal for adding an allowed subnet to send Sonar Netflow traffic for data collection:Each subnet that will be sending data to this Endpoint will need to be added as an allowed subnet first.
Creating a Netflow Endpoint with Whitelist mode
When creating a Netflow Endpoint, and you'd like to use Whitelist mode, the steps are very similar to the overall creation.
- Navigate to Settings > Networking > Netflow Endpoints, and then click on Create Netflow Endpoint:
- Next, with the Create Netflow Endpoint modal open, enter your endpoint name and ensure Whitelist Mode is checked:
- With the Endpoint created, click on the Create Netflow Whitelist action button:
- With the Create Netflow Whitelist modal open, enter one of the subnets you'd like to whitelist:To maximize Netflow performance when using Whitelist Mode, it's recommended to keep your whitelisted subnets manageable. For example, listing multiple /24 subnets is less efficient than listing 192.168.0.0/16
Configuring your Delivery Agent
Each device that can deliver Netflow is configured differently, but please see below for a quick tutorial on a MikroTik router.
First, open the IP menu and click on Traffic Flow.

If you only wish to collect data from certain interfaces (for example, if you have a single customer-facing interface), then select the appropriate interfaces in the Interfaces section. If this router handles a lot of traffic, you should limit the reporting interfaces to lessen the load on your router and your Sonar instance.
The Cache entries option controls the number of flows that can be in the router's memory simultaneously. If you have a high quantity of traffic, you should increase this – just be aware that it will increase memory consumption on your router. Unless you have a reason to change them, leave the active flow timeout and inactive flow timeout at their default values.
Now click the Targets button and then the + button.

Enter the address of the Netflow endpoint (52.189.73.208) in the Dst. Address field, and the port you were provided when creating the Netflow endpoint in Sonar in the Port field. Set the Version field to 5 and click OK. After a few minutes, you will see data usage for your customers begin to tabulate on their accounts in Sonar.