SCENARIO
Taps serve as a starting point for creating a visibility architecture. However, a problem arises if you try to connect monitoring tools directly to a tap. Those tools become flooded with too much data, which overloads them, causing packet loss and CPU overload.
This is where an NPB is useful. These devices filter the data to send only the right data to the right tool. Packets are filtered at L2–4; Ixia can also uniquely provide up to L7 based filtering. Duplicate packets can also be removed, and sensitive content stripped before the data is sent to the monitoring tools, if that is required, as well. This provides a better solution to improve the efficiency and utility of your monitoring tools.
Packet brokers provide the following typical benefits:
• filtering of monitoring data that sends multiple streams of data to the different tools on your network.
• aggregating data from multiple sources.
• load balancing filtered data to multiple tools.
• deduplicating packet data.
• packet manipulation (header stripping, packet trimming, data masking, etc.)
IXIA SOLUTIONS
Ixia’s NPBs, as part of the Ixia architecture, help speed application delivery and enable effective troubleshooting and monitoring for network security, application performance, and SLA fulfillment—allowing IT to meet compliance mandates. Ixia’s out-of-band network visibility solutions are comprised of a comprehensive product portfolio of high-performance taps, virtual taps, and NPBs, all easily deployed and managed.
The Vision portfolio of NPBs are powered by a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that allows you to easily connect monitoring tools to appropriate SPAN and tap ports with the simple click of a mouse.
Ixia NPBs offer simplified, intuitive management that is key to keeping total cost of ownership low. They enable you to:
• Create network connections and filters by using the intuitive GUI to aggregate, filter, and distribute network traffic to monitoring tools with a few clicks of the mouse and virtually eliminate the need to rewire equipment.
• Restrict access to specific filters, ports, or monitoring tools by delivering improved access control management to meet compliance and regulatory requirements.
• Vision NPBs monitor key SNMP statistics from any network management system so that you can view and report on key information, such as the amount of traffic each tool receives, and get instant notification of oversubscribed tools.
• Accommodate your organization’s increasing need for more IP addresses by easily accessing the NPB using IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.