100G networks are no longer the future talk for many data center, telco and enterprise network architects. The 100G future is here - our consumption of everything video - including YouTube, Facebook Live, Netflix and Amazon Video will continue to drive this demand to beyond 100G.
But for today, how do you handle monitoring at 100G speeds? Is there a scalable way to address increased traffic volume that still accommodates monitoring tools at 10G?
As network speeds increase, monitoring and security solutions need to keep pace by providing real-time and accurate analysis for security and network administrators to stay aware of operational and security issues. At Garland we have several technology partners that specialize in high speed and high performance monitoring technologies that use behavior analytics.
Flowmon Networks is a long-standing pioneer in delivering monitoring and security tools for high-speed networks. Garland Technology and Flowmon formed a technology partnership in June 2016. Through collaboration, both parties have introduced a joint end-to-end solution for the management and security of high-speed, 100G networks. “We really appreciate Garland's focus and deep expertise in tapping and packet broker technologies for 100G environment. adds Jiri Tobola, VP of Sales and Alliances at Flowmon Networks.
Accolade Technology is the technology leader in high performance packet capture and application acceleration adapters/NICs. Garland Technology and Accolade Technology began a technology partnership in June 2015 through collaborative testing, measurement and validation of Garland’s 10G, 40G and 100G passive fiber network TAPs with Accolade’s ANIC adapters which are widely deployed within global OEM tier 1 network monitoring, security and OEM customer appliances. “We have rigorously tested our products against Garland Technology’s comprehensive line of 10G, 40G and 100G passive fiber network TAPs, and Garland’s TAPs exceeded the demanding benchmarks and high performance requirements of our mission critical testing protocol.”said Robbie Dhillon, CEO of Accolade Technology.
Big Switch Networks, the leader in open SDN fabrics partnered with Garland Technology to enable high performance network visibility and security in 2015. Garland and Big Switch enable simple, highly scalable and cost-effective monitoring for all network traffic, including joint solutions for 10G, 40G and 100G network access and visibility.“We are partnering with Garland to deliver fully interoperable 10G, 40G, and now 100G monitoring solutions for high-performance data center visibility and security,” said Prashant Gandhi, Vice President of Products and Strategy at Big Switch Networks.
Edgecore Networks, Edgecore Networks is the leader in open networking, providing a full line of 1G, 10, 25G, 40G, 50G and 100G open and OCP switches that offer choice of NOS and SDN software for data center, telecommunications and Enterprise network use cases. Garland Technology and Edgecore have deployed numerous open networking joint solutions globally for 10G, 25G, 40G and 100G SDN data centers.
To deliver data-driven network monitoring and security solutions - the data needs to be 100% accurate, have zero dropped or distorted packets, accurate relationships of frames, spacing or response times - while not affecting the live network traffic. That is why our partners rely on getting data from the live wire. A passive fiber TAP is simply a ‘bump in the wire’ and can be used in networks of all speeds.
Learn more > Read the 101 Series on Passive Fiber Network TAPs
Where do you send the data once you get it? Most of the monitoring tools on the market will not support, or won’t need 100G of data. To optimize the performance of your monitoring tools, the data can be sent to a network packet broker where it can perform:
Filtering - Send only the traffic required to the monitoring tool
Aggregation - Send traffic to one or many links
Load Balance - Balance traffic across multiple ports, 10G, 25G, and 40G to allow multiple tools to handle higher network speeds
If you’re planning ahead or your 100G future is today, be sure your data capture plan is an integrated part of your overall monitoring solution. The tool is only as good as the data is sees, with a Garland TAP we guarantee you’ll see every bit, byte and packet®.
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.
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.
Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.
Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.