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

Tapping it in Barcelona

February 20, 2018

CiscoLive 2018 Show

When it was announced that CiscoLive! EMEA would take place in Barcelona, Spain for the 2018 show, the Garland Technology team didn’t wait a minute to sign up.  After all, getting out of cold and snowy Buffalo in January/February for sunny Barcelona doesn’t take much arm twisting.


Determined to make a splash at this year’s event, we invited many of our distributing partners from Europe to join us at the booth. It was quite the global contingent, with representatives from Neox Networks (Germany), Network Image (Sweden), Ingecom (Spain/Portugal), Alstor (Poland), and our own European team. With such global coverage, our booth visitors were able to speak with a Garland Technology distributor from their native country right off the bat. This made our booth really stand out from some of the other US organizations presenting.

 

What does Cisco say about SPAN?

Like at past shows, again we were surprised at how many networking techs are unaware of network TAPs and are still relying on SPAN ports for their connections.

"The switch treats SPAN data with a lower priority than to-port data...the best strategy is to make decisions based on the traffic levels of the configuration and when in doubt to use the SPAN port only for relatively low-throughput situations." Cisco

Garland remains committed to educating the industry on the importance of using a network TAP as your foundation of visibility.

CiscoLive Group


We had a great time at the show getting to catch up with some customers, industry experts, our technology partners and share the Garland Technology brand with new Cisco users. [Check out our Facebook photo album recapping the show.]

Can’t wait until next year’s show in Barcelona? We’ll be at CiscoLive! Orlando in June 2018, ready to convert more of the SPAN users to the TAP side.

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