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"Are You Still Using SPAN Ports?”—[Video] A Recap of Cisco Live! Berlin

February 25, 2016

We had a blast at Cisco Berlin 2016 this past week with the 12,000+ attendees. German attendance was strong, but there were plenty of people from large industrial manufacturers, governmental agencies, telecom and more representing locations from around the globe. We met a lot of great networking professionals while supporting our technology partner, Cisco, as we focused on showing our commitment to EMEA and network access points (TAPs).

However, even with so many impressive networking pros, we’re always surprised how many of them still use SPAN ports.

As seen in our TAP’d In Cisco Berlin video – we converted many of them!

“Are You Still Using SPAN?”—Our Educational Approach to the Conference

There’s a reason our industry loves attending the Cisco Live! series of events—they help us keep up with the rapidly changing network access industry as well as providing us an opportunity to educate others on best practices for network access. We spent the week making it clear that if you’re still using SPAN, you do not have 100% network access or visibility.

TAP’d In – Cisco Berlin  

 

Times in the Network Access Community

In the last few months, consolidations, buyouts, product redefinitions and unexpected end-of-life scenarios have plagued network access community. With our dedicated office staff in Germany, we’re pushing to prove that we are committed to both the U.S. and EMEA markets by providing network access products that support the entire wire.

One of the most sought after network TAP solutions were for 10G fiber monitoring to support in-band appliances. Whether you’re a U.S. company with gigabit copper networks or a German company shifting to 10G fiber monitoring solutions, we are committed to providing a complete line of network TAPs for anything from the industrial Ethernet to emerging data centers.

Cisco Support Doesn’t Stop in Germany

We had such a great time supporting Cisco in Berlin that we’ve already signed up to attend the U.S. version of the show in Las Vegas from July 10 to July 14. If you’re stilling using SPAN, make sure to find us at the show and learn why network TAPs should be your primary access solution.

Until then, we wish you all the best!

Cheers!
Chris and Randy

https://www.garlandtechnology.com/maintaining-architecture-network-visibility-while-implementing-port-channel-lp

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Heartbeats Packets Inside the Bypass TAP

If the inline security tool goes off-line, the TAP will bypass the tool and automatically keep the link flowing. The Bypass TAP does this by sending heartbeat packets to the inline security tool. As long as the inline security tool is on-line, the heartbeat packets will be returned to the TAP, and the link traffic will continue to flow through the inline security tool.

If the heartbeat packets are not returned to the TAP (indicating that the inline security tool has gone off-line), the TAP will automatically 'bypass' the inline security tool and keep the link traffic flowing. The TAP also removes the heartbeat packets before sending the network traffic back onto the critical link.

While the TAP is in bypass mode, it continues to send heartbeat packets out to the inline security tool so that once the tool is back on-line, it will begin returning the heartbeat packets back to the TAP indicating that the tool is ready to go back to work. The TAP will then direct the network traffic back through the inline security tool along with the heartbeat packets placing the tool back inline.

Some of you may have noticed a flaw in the logic behind this solution!  You say, “What if the TAP should fail because it is also in-line? Then the link will also fail!” The TAP would now be considered a point of failure. That is a good catch – but in our blog on Bypass vs. Failsafe, I explained that if a TAP were to fail or lose power, it must provide failsafe protection to the link it is attached to. So our network TAP will go into Failsafe mode keeping the link flowing.

Glossary

  1. Single point of failure: a risk to an IT network if one part of the system brings down a larger part of the entire system.

  2. Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.

  3. Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.

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