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Visibility Solutions

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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Garland Technology's resource library offers free use of white papers, eBooks, use cases, infographics, data sheets, video demos and more.

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The TAP into Technology blog provides the latest news and insights on network access and visibility, including: network security, network monitoring and appliance connectivity and guest blogs from Industry experts and technology partners

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Our extensive technology partnership ecosystem solves critical problems when it comes to network security, monitoring, application analysis, forensics and packet inspection.

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Garland Technology is dedicated to high standards in quality and reliability, while delivering the greatest economical solutions for enterprise, service providers, and government agencies worldwide.

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Whether you are ready to make a network TAP your foundation of visibility or just have questions, please contact us. Ask us about the Garland Difference!

Follow the History and Added Function of the Network TAP

The two most common methods to access network data are via a Network TAP or from a SPAN port.

How much do you know about Network TAPs? If you don't use them, maybe you think it's just another failure point or there may be a forwarding delay. If you do use them you probably consider them a must have.

What if I can answer some of those questions you may have in a few quick points?


NETWORK TAPs

Let's refresh - a TAP (Network Test Access Point) transmits the send and receive data streams simultaneously on separate dedicated channels, ensuring all data arrives at the monitoring device in real time.100% of the data, it doesn't get better than that!

Network TAPIn 2000, Garland Technology’s CTO/Co-founder Jerry Dillard developed the bypass TAP to continuously check the health of active, in-line appliances- ensuring traffic flows regardless of the appliances condition. 

The passive network TAP was patented around 2002 as a device allowing a third party to “listen-in” to network activity.

Network TAPs can do a lot of things you may not realize. They can be passive “listen only” devices that sends all data to your monitoring tools. Or they can be active, in-line feeding your security tools, providing you a failsafe. Meaning if a failure occurs with the appliance or the tap, the live network traffic is not affected. Can SPAN do that?

With packet capture, the TAP does not distort or drop packets, regardless of bandwidth including physical layer errors. TAPs do not alter the time relationships of frames, spacing or response times and supports full duplex traffic analysis.

SPAN

SPAN portYes, we've all used the SPAN port. Did you know the SPAN or monitor port was originally a quality assurance test point developed by Cisco on Catalyst switches for mirroring packets to a port for monitoring purposes?

Unlike the TAP, packets can be dropped when ports are oversubscribed and can distort real time communication such as VoIP and video chats, making lawful intercept unacceptable.

Today's network, security and management pros require 100% network uptime while maintaining full network visibility and access. You can't afford to not see every bit, byte and packet®.


Which do you use to feed your tools? Click below and take a look at the new TAP vs SPAN infographic and compare the difference. 

TAP vs SPAN

 

Written by Tim O'Neill

As the Senior Technology Consultant & Chief Editor at LoveMyTool, Tim O’Neill has over 45 years of technology experience at data/voice and video networking analysis companies, including successful senior roles in Sales, Product Design, Marketing Management, Business Development and Security.

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