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Garland Technology's Network TAPs are now Certified 'Cisco Compatible'

April 4, 2017

So what does this mean to you? Well, when you are considering a connectivity strategy for your active, in-line appliances or security monitoring tools, it demonstrates that Garland's network TAPs were tested and validated with live data and performed to Cisco's standards.

What standards were tested? Interoperability, health check/failsafe check, full packet capture and zero packet loss.

Why should you care? Read on.

What's Your Connectivity Strategy?

Enterprise networking has many layers, but it all starts at the foundation: Layer 1; aka the physical layer. Whether you are considering a new NGIPS deployment or you are passively monitoring with forensics, application or network performance - you need to see all the data, all the time.

NGIPS deployments rarely live in a silo, they live in a stack - and often that stack includes additional active, in-line appliances that need to share the same packets. Garland Technology's network bypass TAPs are a Cisco Certified connectivity solution, as well as an approved solution for many other active, in-line appliance manufacturer's.

As a Cisco Solutions Partner, Garland features 11 common use cases for a variety of network scenarios including: high availability, media conversion, high density data center solutions for both copper and fiber networks, packet brokers to filter, aggregate and load balance, and hybrid bypass taps with packet brokers to manage multiple, active, in-line and passive monitoring tools. 

Create a Foundation of Visibility

Deploy network TAPs strategically in your enterprise network.

Foundation of visibility

Let's return to the question, "Why should you care?" By partnering with a certified solution provider you save time by reducing or eliminating preliminary research/compatibility and proof of concept. Garland is the only network TAP vendor to hold the Cisco Compatible distinction which demonstrates our committment to the Cisco partnership and to manufacturing quality products with zero tolerance to failure. 

Visit the Cisco technology partner page to learn more about the joint solutions. Have a project that you need to a connectivity strategy?  Reach out to our network design team.

 

See Everything. Secure Everything.

Contact us now to secure and optimized your network operations

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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