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Garland Technology is committed to educating the benefits of having a strong foundation of network visibility and access. By providing this insight we protect the security of data across your network and beyond.

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Bypass vs Failsafe: What's the Difference?

Computer networking terminology can become overly fickle once vendor products get into the mix. To help alleviate some confusion, we’re going to go over some common terms that often throw customers for a loop and hopefully clear up some misunderstandings about our Network TAPs.

“Bypass” vs “Failsafe"

We often see the term “Bypass” used to define the TAP’s ability keep the network link up and running if the Network TAP stops working. Now, the rationale behind this understanding of the term makes sense: If the TAP goes down, the network link bypasses the TAP, causing the TAP to Fail Open and the network to continue functioning. At Garland Technology, we take what causes the need to fail open into context and provided a fitting name: Failsafe.


Failsafe

If a Network TAP ever needs to fail open, it’s because the TAP experienced a significant failure. If the situation arises where a TAP fails, we want to make sure that the TAP does so as gracefully and safely as possible. Hence, “Failsafe”.

Download Now: 3 Keys to Network Resiliency - A Security Engineer's Go-to Guide to Avoiding Network Downtime [Free whitepaper]



Garland Technology also makes an Inline Network TAP called the “Bypass TAP.

Modes-Bypass1

This type of TAP sits on a network link just like a normal TAP, but instead of sending copies of traffic to an out-of-band tool, it redirects the production traffic over to an appliance that is physically placed out-of-band, logically bringing it in line with the production network.



The Bypass TAP provides additional functionality: the redirected traffic has heartbeats added to it, allowing the Bypass TAP to be aware of the health of the inline appliance. If the inline tool fails or becomes unresponsive for any reason, the Bypass TAP Bypasses the failed tool by allowing the production network traffic to flow through the TAP without being redirected toward the now unresponsive appliance. This process effectively removes points of failures from the production network, increasing network resiliency.

If something causes the Bypass TAP to fail, it will still Failsafe, keeping the network up and running.

While all our TAPs have failsafe, only the Bypass TAP will bypass failed inline tools. Garland Technology focuses on network uptime, ensuring that if a failure should occur, it will have the least amount of impact to the production network as possible. When looking to add inline tools or visibility to your network, being aware of terminology like this is an important step in making sure you’re network monitoring solution is the correct one.

Looking to add a bypass solution to your security deployment, but not sure where to start? Join us for a brief network Design-IT consultation or demo. No obligation - it’s what we love to do!

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Written by Jerry Dillard

Jerry Dillard, CTO and Co-founder of Garland Technology, leverages over two decades in design and engineering to ensure maximum performance within today’s network environments. Dillard, the inventor of the Bypass TAP, continues to innovate network visibility solutions worldwide.

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