<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=2975524&amp;fmt=gif">
BLOG

Networking News: Data Center Outages, IoT Security and SD-WAN

April 9, 2019

app-browser-coffee-6335

The networking world is ever changing, with new monitoring and security tools entering the market, companies introducing exciting new technology, partnerships being formed to create disruptive solutions, and more. With so much note-worthy news, I thought it would be a good idea to start sharing what I think are some of the most important news stories and updates in the industry this month and what that could mean for the industry as a whole.
 

Network and IT systems are the biggest cause of data center outages

No longer is power the primary cause of disruptive data center outages. In 2018, there was actually a decrease in the number of unplanned outages related to power issues. This can be attributed to the fact that power supplies around the world are becoming more stable. What’s worrying though is that there has been an increase of unplanned outages due to network and IT systems, from 17% in 2017 to 32% in 2018. Networks are growing larger with more sites being connected. Additional complexity is added as resources are offloaded to 3rd parties. What does this mean for the networking world? Network design and testing of all equipment to ensure they are designed and installed properly is important to lessen the likelihood of an expensive, unplanned data center outage. Read More

How to address security for IoT in the cloud

IoT is everywhere. You just have to look around your own home to see the influx of IoT devices in our daily lives. But with all of the data that these devices are generating, you would think security would be a bigger focus. That’s just not the case. IoT companies need to take a systemic view of security from where the device is located in someone’s home to how often data is captured and stored in the cloud. At the very least, encryption of data must take place enroute to the cloud, with additional security monitoring of the devices themselves and the storage. Without visibility into where the data is coming from and being stored, IoT organizations will be left blind to attacks. Read More

>> Read Now: How to Overcome Packet Capture Challenges in the Cloud [Free Whitepaper]

SD-WAN does more than lower network costs

It’s widely known that SD-WAN can provide significant cost savings for an organization. But there are additional benefits that are often overlooked including flexibility, ease of management, and security. This allows an organization to adopt SD-WAN incrementally overtime, to maximize the value of existing infrastructure and not disrupting the entire network. Read More

Defending Industrial Ethernet Network Security Garland Technology

See Everything. Secure Everything.

Contact us now to secure and optimized your network operations
Contact Us

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.

NETWORK MANAGEMENT | THE 101 SERIES