Glossary
Review the definitions for terms used across Cloudflare’s Magic Network Monitoring documentation.
| Term | Definition |
| distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack | A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. |
| flow data | Represents records of communication between devices. There are a number of flow data protocols, such as NetFlow or sFlow. |
| NetFlow | Network protocol developed by Cisco to collect and monitor network traffic flow data. |
| prefix | A number that identifies the network portion of an IP address. It tells devices if an IP address is on the same network or not. It is shown as a number after a slash (for example, Using an analogy, the prefix is like a street address. If an IP is in the same street, it belongs to the same network of devices. |
| sampling | In the context of Magic Network Monitoring, sampling is the process of taking samples of packets for a specific period to identify potential attacks. |
| sFlow | An industry standard packet sampling protocol to monitor network devices. |