Produkte > Director™ Smart Filtering Appliances/Network Packet Bro ...

The growing momentum toward 10G networks brings major challenges with it —in particular, monitoring critical traffic in a high-speed, high-volume landscape. In most organizations, recording and inspecting all network traffic for threats and data leaks is vital to compliance and security. But such intensive pressures threaten to overwhelm and limit the effectiveness of the very devices that carry out the monitoring: traffic recorders and intrusion prevention and detection systems (IPSs and IDSs). Unable to keep up with increasing loads, these overburdened tools can put service-level agreements at risk and expose the network to threats. To deal with this problem, a company may have to invest in costly new tools that are engineered for the 10G environment.

In response to customer needs for a cost-effective solution to this challenge, Net Optics developed xBalancer™—the first appliance in the industry built specifically to prevent tool overburdening by distributing the traffic load to multiple monitoring tools. xBalancer’s 24 SFP+ ports and integrated data rate conversion makes it ideal for balancing traffic from 10G links to multiple 1G tools. It can also aggregate traffic from multiple 1G and 10G links and distribute it to 1G or 10G tools.

xBalancer’s load-balancing capability splits traffic into multiple streams so that two or more tools working in parallel can process data. It takes traffic from any network port or aggregated set of network ports and distributes it to monitor ports for balancing according to IP address, port, protocol, VLAN, and MAC address, or other parameters.
By enabling already-integrated 1G tools to fill an expanded role, xBalancer helps organizations handle increasing traffic volumes without investing in new 10G equipment. Not only does this minimize CAPEX, it also eliminates the operational expense of implementing the new tools and training users. Best of all, xBalancer dramatically raises the efficiency, security and availability of the network itself by reducing or bypassing IPS failures.

Purpose-Built to Share Devices Across Multiple Links and Solve Oversubscription
The innovative xBalancer is engineered to distribute traffic to multiple monitoring tools and relieve oversubscribed resources, including:

• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) / Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
• Firewalls
• Traffic recorders
• Web accelerators
• Application performance management devices
• Network Management and Analysis Tools
• and other inline appliances

xFilter Packet Broker Appliance — a Leading Solution for Dynamic Networks

Network Packet Brokers (NPBs) are vital for meeting the high monitoring needs driven by cloud-fueled complexity and capacity. Now, Net Optics answers the growing demand for a hardware-based appliance to optimize the access and visibility of your monitoring, security and acceleration tools.

Combined with Director family switches and the versatile Net Optics xBalancer, the xFilter bundled solution seamlessly aggregates raw traffic from multiple devices, and then speeds that traffic to your network’s monitoring tools for inspection. xFilter simplifies deploying and managing your security and monitoring tools while maximizing tool ROI—reducing CAPEX and the OPEX for managing and maintaining them. With xFilter, your tools can deliver the performance, security, and compliance monitoring you need in the virtualized and cloud environment.

How xFilter Works

xFilter serves as a gateway for pass-through network data streams and a termination point for traffic that has been encapsulated by MPLS, GRE and other tunneling technologies. It works at exceptionally high speed to decapsulate this traffic, then reassembles fragmented packets. After decapsulation, xFilter can perform various packet operations like header removal and VLAN tagging. Then xFilter can forward packets to an egress port (and optionally a VLAN), as determined by your filtering rules.

With its high port density (up to 12 10G ports), xFilter reduces complex traffic to simple data streams. The multi-functional xFilter can strip and remove MPLS headers and VN-Tag headers, perform VN-Tag mapping of virtual interface IDs, decapsulate and strip Cisco FabricPath headers, tag VLANs to identify a packet’s destination, filter/analyze packets to control access based on defined criteria—and much more. This efficient appliance is essential to network security and productivity, enabling you to gain full value from your monitoring tools.

xFilter improves your network visibility and security substantially and helps you manage ever-growing threats to your network. Not only is xFilter optimized for use with Net Optics Taps and the Phantom Virtualization Tap, the appliance integrates smoothly with Director solutions and xBalancer, saving you time and cost. With xFilter, you reduce your packet payload overhead before traffic reaches your monitoring tools, raising the overall efficiency of your network.

As networks gain speed and complexity, the increase in data volumes threaten to overwhelm visibility, degrade performance, and disrupt service. Companies are increasingly challenged by heavy compliance demands and vulnerability to intrusion - driving the need for ever-greater functionality in the 10G environment. Now, Director xStreamPro breaks new ground - protecting traffic from threats, improving network visibility, reducing latency and microburst congestion. Advanced features include

• Dynamic Load Balancing and filtering to maximize performance and avoid oversubscription
• Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) for precise examination of every bit of every packet on the wire
• Timestamping for synchronized accuracy in analysis
• Snapshot packet capture for user-defined traffic profiles and bit-level analysis
• Rich Web GUI with real-time, per-second network analytics

The emergence of 10 Gigabit speeds in the networking market means a steady increase in complex, multi-protocol traffic. With voice, data, and video all sharing the same network links, monitoring traffic for performance and security issues is more important than ever before. Organizations recognize the need to build monitoring access into the architecture of 10G networks from day one, and Net Optics Director xStream is the ideal foundation for a 10G Monitoring Access Platform (MAP).

Director xStream is a data monitoring switch that aggregates, regenerates, switches, filters, and load balances monitoring traffic. With the highest density of 10G ports in the monitoring industry. 10G network ports plus four 10G monitor ports in 1U of rack. Director xStream empowers the NOC to share a pool of monitoring tools across a large number of network links. If more network or monitor ports are required, any port can be used for either network or monitor. In fact, by splitting the cables into separate transmit and receive fibers, a total of 24 network inputs and 24 monitor outputs are available for concurrent use. Moreover, all of Director xStream’s 24 ports are SFP+ slots, so they can accommodate 1G SFP as well as 10G SFP+ transceivers, and support any type of media. In-line link connections require external Taps.

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A New Way to Access and Monitor Data
Director Pro breakthrough technologies bring a whole new level to controlling, accessing and monitoring data.The cost and complexity of monitoring solutions are steadily increasing. More appliances need to be deployed across an ever-increasing number of network links because:

• High-speed 1-Gbps and 10-Gbps links generate orders-of-magnitude more traffic than ever needed to be monitored before
• The number of security threats are growing on a daily basis
• Converged voice-video-data networks demand specialized tools to optimize different types of traffic

A New Way to Access and Monitor Data
Director Pro breakthrough technologies bring a whole new level to controlling, accessing and monitoring data.The cost and complexity of monitoring solutions are steadily increasing. More appliances need to be deployed across an ever-increasing number of network links because:

• High-speed 1-Gbps and 10-Gbps links generate orders-of-magnitude more traffic than ever needed to be monitored before
• The number of security threats are growing on a daily basis
• Converged voice-video-data networks demand specialized tools to optimize different types of traffic

Net Optics Director is an advanced Network Packet Broker (NPB) and monitoring access switch that directs and load balances traffic by customizable filters to specific security, monitoring and management tools across the network. Directing specific types of traffic to specific monitoring tools increases the performance of these tools and allows you to fully utilize the investment in your tools across the network.

Traffic is filtered by Director’s smart filtering engine TapFlow™, based on a variety of parameters such as protocol type, VLAN and address or port, payload content and other packet header information, as well as additional packet manipulation tasks such as VLAN stripping and tagging that help customers deploy tools across the network. Director offers aggregation and regeneration of network traffic leveraging its modular design of 10 SFP ports, up to 4 XFP ports and two modular Director Network Modules, providing 10 daisy-chained units with up to to 380 usable ports. Additional features include filter-based load balancing, ease of management with CLI, Web UI and SNMP management interfaces, central management by Indigo Pro, media type modularity and resilient connections with maximum uptime.

Director Network Models (DNM) are modular bays providing 24 Span Ports or 12 inline network links. Each Director supports two DNMs. Additional models of Director from the PRO version also provide Deep Packet Inspection functionality that further increases the efficiency of monitoring tools.

Forwarding, Aggregation and Regeneration
Director aggregates traffic from multiple links including multi-protocol aggregated traffic streams and can forward each tool only the data that it needs using customizable filters. Director provides one-to-one, many-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many mappings of network links and Span ports to monitor ports. Though traffic is aggregated from many sources, Director provides the ability to track the source of forwarded traffic by both tagging the traffic with the ingress port number and identifying which filter directed the traffic to an individual tool. This enables to achieve cost-effectiveness and efficiency by maximizing utilization of existing monitoring tools.

Advanced Filtering Options with TapFlow™
Tapflow is a low latency, hardware-based filtering engine that allows forwarding each tool the traffic of interest for its particular purpose, without missing any data. Director supports advanced filtering options including packet headers and protocols (layer 4 filtering) and filtering by VLAN tags and MPLS labels. ROI is multiplied because specialized tools dedicate all their processing power to the tasks they are designed for, preventing oversubscription and contention. Additional Director Pro models include Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) functionality that provides the ability to apply filters to a packet or multiple packets at any location, regardless of packet length (how "deep" the packet is) or the location of the data to be matched within the packet.

Modularity
Director offers 2 sets of network modules and 4 input/output 10G ports, all allowing for maximum flexibility. Director offers 2 types of modules. The copper-based module operates at 10/100/1000 in both Span port and inline versions. The fiber module is also available as a Span port version or inline version with all fiber modules offered in multi-mode and single-mode. Director provides a total of 4 10G ports that can be used either to redirect 10G traffic to multiple 1G monitoring ports or to collect 1G traffic and send it out to a 10G monitoring tool.

Filter Tagging
Filter tagging adds a user-defined VLAN tag to packets to enable tools to identify input streams within aggregated traffic. Director provides the ability to track the source of forwarded traffic by both tagging the traffic with the ingress port number and identifying which filter directed the traffic to an individual tool.

Tool Load Balancing
Director can aggregate traffic from multiple network links and load balance the traffic to multiple tools. This ensures that all monitoring tools are utilized efficiently to maximize the monitoring capacity of the entire network. Peak performance network is achieved without investing heavily in additional tools or risking oversubscription. The load can be balanced by IP address, port, protocol, VLAN, and MAC address, or by any other packet header field or its combination.

Virtual Chassis Using Daisy-Chaining
With Director up to 10 Director nodes can be daisy-chained together to act as a single logical unit with up to 380 ports and industry-leading total throughput of 740Gbps. Policies and filters are defined on the master and populated automatically among daisy chain members. This allows for increased monitoring leverage and visibility on the network.

Flexibility
Director makes extensive use of modular interface technology to eliminate the headache of matching interfaces between monitoring tools and links. All Director monitor ports use SFP or XFP modular transceivers, so virtually any monitoring tool can be accommodated. In addition, Director Network Modules are available for copper and 10/Gigabit SX(50/62.5µm) or LX(8.5µm) or ZX(8.5µm) Fiber in both in-line and Span versions, increasing the flexibility of media type support.

Ease of Use
Director provides 3 management interfaces: CLI, Web-based GUI and SNMP. The Command Line Interface (CLI) allows access to Director both locally and remotely (over SSH); a Web-based interface can be launched with any browser and manage a single Director appliance for port and filter management and SNMP can be used to configure, manage and monitor up to 10 daisy chained Director devices. Director supports multiple authentication and authorization (AAA) servers and provides Syslog support for sending log messages to remote servers.

Resiliency
Director keeps traffic flowing even in the event of a power loss using the virtual Zero Delay technology. Director’s two modular power supplies provide maximum uptime and fault tolerance. If one power supply loses power, Director continues operating on the remaining supply. If a power supply module needs replacement, there is no need to take Director offline because the power supplies are hot-swappable. Both universal AC and -48VDC (telco) models are available.

Compatibility
Director is compatible with all Net Optics Taps and Bypass Switches as well as with all major manufacturers´ monitoring devices, including protocol analyzers, probes, and intrusion detection systems.

As traffic grows, today’s networks deploy an architecture of dozens - even hundreds - of Taps and data monitoring switches. Along with that growth comes the urgent need to manage those devices. Now, Indigo Pro gives you a centralized solution to configure and monitor Taps, virtual Taps, data monitoring switches, and network controller switches, for a streamlined, responsive, and coordinated approach to management.

Indigo Pro makes administration easier and more precise than ever before, whatever your current or planned number of appliances, both virtual and physical. This rich-featured platform just enabled even greater network visibility and security threat management. Indigo Pro is the ideal management solution - robust, comprehensive and flexible for managing few or many wired, wireless, and virtual solutions.

Now your management and planning capabilities can keep pace with growth, and plan for administering future growth too. Indigo Pro works as a physical or virtual solution in VMware or Xen-compatible environments. It deploys instantly using Hypervisor tools - no rack space needed; no added power or cabling cost and you save licensing fees too.

Easy to Deploy with Automated Device Discovery
Get up and running fast with fully automatic identification of supported Net Optics and third-party devices across the network. Add or remove devices and Indigo Pro adapts accordingly.

See It All at a Glance
Indigo Pro’s dynamic network topology map displays “up” or “down” status of your supported devices. Simply click on an icon to drill down to detailed device status—plus see the status of attached links.

New! Manage More Devices, Clusters and Daisy Chains
Stay ahead of growing network demands and manage more Net Optics and third-party devices, even clusters and daisy chains; bring up any port with a click. Set parameters like IP address and schedule bulk software upgrades easily.

Troubleshoot and Resolve
When faults do occur, Indigo Pro collects and displays event messages and generates alerts. Users can identify threshold-triggered events and take action. You can also create and configure filters on any administered devices.

More ways to display
Chose from 120 graphs, plus new charts, dashboards, enriched graphics and presentation options - all easy to launch. Gather data in real time, archive it in a database for trend analysis and display it in vivid, understandable browser format. Network professional or business user, you can deliver vital network information perform capacity planning and keep compliance records. Define your own views - even create a “home page” to save time at login and find out relevant data faster.

Network Knowledge Is Power
Instantly view the statistics that determine network health: bandwidth utilization, byte and packet counts, errors, and jumbo frames and more - by device.

The Optimal Security Solution
Indigo Pro is ideal for handling security-related issues: all user actions are inspected and audited against a permissions profile and logged to an audit trail. The system’s three-layer security system is advanced and comprehensive.

- Authenticated, encrypted sessions between client browser and server
- User authentication by a login password and user name
- Role-based access control and device locking

Coming Soon:
- Supported devices backup and restore
- Cloud-based updates for IP appliance and supported managed devices
- Support for xStream devices


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