A Simple Solution To Combatting Virtual Data Center Blind Spots

Blind spots are a long-established threat to virtual data centers. They are inherent to virtual machine (VM) usage and technology due to the nature of VMs, lack of visibility for inter- and intra-VM data monitoring, the typical practices around the use of VM’s, and the use of multiple hypervisors in enterprise environments.

Virtual machines by their nature hide inter- and intra-VM traffic. This is because the traffic stays within in a very small geographic area. As I mentioned in a previous blog, Do You Really Know What’s Lurking in Your Data Center?, Gartner Research found that 80% of VM traffic never reaches the top of the rack where it can be captured by traditional monitoring technology. This means that if something is happening to that 80% of your data (security threat, performance issue, compliance issue, etc.), you’ll never know about it. This is a huge area of risk.

In addition, an Ixia conducted market survey on virtualization technology released in March 2015, exposed a high propensity for data center blind spots to exist due to typical data center practices. This report showed that there was probably hidden data, i.e. blind spots, existing on typical enterprise data networks due to inconsistent monitoring practices, lack of monitoring practices altogether in several cases, and the typical lack of one central group responsible for collecting monitoring data.

For instance, only 37% of the respondents were monitoring their virtualized environment with the same processes that they use in their physical data center environments, and what monitoring was done usually used less capabilities in the virtual environment. This means that there is a potential for key monitoring information to NOT be captured for the virtual environment, which could lead to security, performance, and compliance issues for the business. In addition, only 22% of business designated the same staff to be responsible for monitoring and managing their physical and virtual technology monitoring. Different groups being responsible for monitoring practices and capabilities often leads to inconsistencies in data collection and execution of company processes.

The survey further revealed that only 42% of businesses monitor the personally identifiable information (PII) transmitted and stored on their networks. At the same time, 2/3 of the respondents were running critical applications across within their virtual environment. Mixed together, these “typical practices” should definitely raise warning signs for IT management.

Additional research by firms like IDC and Gartner are exposing another set of risks for enterprises around the use of multiple hypervisors in the data center. For instance, the IDC Virtualization and the Cloud 2013 study found that 16% of customers had already deployed or were planning to deploy more than one hypervisor. Another 45% were open to the idea in the future. In September 2014, another IDC market analysis stated that now over half of the enterprises (51%) have more than one type of hypervisor installed. Gartner ran a poll in July 2014 that also corroborated that multiple hypervisors were being used in enterprises.

This trend is positive, as having a second hypervisor is a good strategy for an enterprise. Multiple hypervisors allow you to:

Negotiate pricing discounts by simply having multiple suppliers
Help address corporate multi-vendor sourcing initiatives
Provide improved business continuity scenarios for product centric security threats

But it is also very troubling, because the cons include:

Extra expenses for the set-up of a multi-vendor environment
Poor to no visibility into a multi-hypervisor environment
An increase in general complexity (particularly management and programming)
And further complexities if you have advanced data center initiatives (like automation and orchestration)

One of the primary concerns is lack of visibility. With a proper visibility strategy, the other cons of a multi-hypervisor environment can be either partially or completely mitigated. One way to accomplish this goal is to deploy a virtual tap that includes filtering capability. The virtual tap allows you the access to all the data you need. This data can be forwarded on to a packet broker for distribution of the information to the right tool(s). Built-in filtering capability is an important feature of the virtual tap so that you can limit costs and bandwidth requirements.

Blind spots that can create the following issues:

Hidden security issues
Inadequate access to data for trending
Inadequate data to demonstrate proper regulatory compliance policy tracking

Virtual taps (like the Ixia Phantom vTap) address blind spots and their inherent dangers.

If the virtual tap is integrated into a holistic visibility approach using a Visibility Architecture, you can streamline your monitoring costs because instead of having two separate monitoring architectures with potentially duplicate equipment (and duplicate costs), you have one architecture that maximizes the efficiency of all your current tools, as well any future investments. When installing the virtual tap, the key is to make sure that it installs into the Hypervisor without adversely affecting the Hypervisor. Once this is accomplished, the virtual tap will have the proper access to inter and intra-VMs that it needs, as well as the ability to efficiently export that information. After this, the virtual tap will need a filtering mechanism so that exported data can be “properly” limited so as not to overload the LAN/WAN infrastructure. The last thing you want to do is to cause any performance problems to your network. Details on these concepts and best practices are available in the whitepapers Illuminating Data Center Blind Spots and Creating A Visibility Architecture.

As mentioned earlier, a multi-hypervisor environment is now a fact for the enterprise. The Ixia Phantom Tap supports multiple hypervisors and has been optimized for VMware ESX and kernel virtual machine (KVM) environments. KVM is starting to make a big push into the enterprise environment. It has been part of the Linux kernel since 2007. According to IDC, shipments of the KVM license were around 5.2 million units in 2014 and they expect that number to increase to 7.2 million by 2017. A lot of the KVM ecosystem is organized by the Open Virtual Alliance and the Phantom vTap supports this recommendation.

To learn more, please visit the Ixia Phantom vTap product page, the Ixia State of Virtualization for Visibility Architectures 2015 report or contact us to see a Phantom vTap demo!

Additional Resources:

Ixia Phantom vTap

Ixia State of Virtualization for Visibility Architectures 2015 report

White Paper: Illuminating Data Center Blind Spots

White Paper: Creating A Visibility Architecture

Blog: Do You Really Know What’s Lurking in Your Data Center?

Solution Focus Category

Network Visibility

Thanks to Ixia for the article.

The First 3 Steps To Take When Your Network Goes Down

Whether it is the middle of the day, or the middle of the night nobody who is in charge of a network wants to get “that call”. There is a major problem and the network is down. It usually starts with one or two complaints “hey, I can’t open my email” or “something is wrong with my web browser” but those few complaints suddenly turn into many and you suddenly you know there is a real problem. What you may not know, is what to do next.

In this blog post, I will examine some basic troubleshooting steps that every network manager should take when investigating an issue. Whether you have a staff of 2 or 200, these common sense steps still apply. Of course, depending on what you discover as you perform your investigation, you may need to take some additional steps to fully determine the root cause of the problem and how to fix it.

Step 1. Determine the extent of the problem.

You will need to try and pinpoint as quickly as possible the scope of the issue. Is it related to a single physical location like just one office, or is it network wide including WAN’s and remote users. This can provide valuable insight into where to go next. If the problem is contained within a single location, then you can be pretty sure that the cause of the issue is also within that location (or at the very least that location plus any uplink connections to other locations).

It may not seem intuitive but if the issue is network wide with multiple affected locations, then sometimes this can really narrow down the problem. It probably resides in the “core” of your network because this is usually the only place that can have an issue which affects such a large portion of your network. That may not make it easier to fix, but it generally does help with identification.

If you’re lucky you might even be able to narrow this issue down even further into a clear segment like “only wireless users” or “everything on VLAN 100” etc. In this case, you need to jump straight into deep dive troubleshooting on just those areas.

Step 2. Try to determine if it is server/application related or network related.

This starts with the common “ping test”. The big question you need to answer is, do my users have connectivity to the servers they are trying to access, but (for some reason) cannot access the applications (this means the problem is in the servers / apps) or do they not have any connectivity at all (which means a network issue).

This simple step can go a long way towards troubleshooting the issue. If there is no network connectivity, then the issue will reside in the infrastructure. Most commonly in L2/L3 devices and firewalls. I’ve seen many cases where the application of a single firewall rule is the cause if an entire network outage.

If there is connectivity, then you need to investigate the servers and applications themselves. Common network management platforms should be able to inform you of server availability including tests for service port availability, the status of services and processes etc. A widespread issue that happens all at once is usually indicative of a problem stemming from a patch or other update / install that was performed on multiple systems simultaneously.

Step 3. Use your network management system to pinpoint, rollback, and/or restart.

Good management systems today should be able to identify when the problem first occurred and potentially even the root cause of the issue (especially for network issues). You also should have backup / restore capabilities for all systems. That way, in a complete failure scenario, you can always fall back to a known good configuration or state. Lastly, you should be able to then restart your services or devices and restore service.

In some cases there may have been a hardware failure that needs to be addressed first before a device can come back online. Having spare parts or emergency maintenance contracts will certainly help in that case. If the issue is more complex like overloading of a circuit or system, then steps may need to be put in place to restrict usage until additional capacity can be added. With most datacenters running on virtualized platforms today, in many cases additional capacity for compute, and storage can be added in less than 60 minutes.

Network issues happen to every organization. Those that know how to effectively respond and take a step by step approach to troubleshooting will be able to restore service quickly.

I hope these three steps to take when your Network goes down was usefull, dont forget to subscribe for our weekly blogs.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance

The Top 3 Reasons Why Network Discovery is Critical to IT Success

Network discovery is the process of identifying devices attached to a network. It establishes the current state and health of your IT infrastructure.

It’s essential for every business due to the fact that without the visibility into your entire environment you can’t successfully accomplish even the basics of network management tasks.

When looking into why Network Discovery is critical to IT success there are three key factors to take into consideration.

1. Discovering the Current State & Health of the Infrastructure.

Understanding the current state and health of the network infrastructure is a fundamental requirement in any infrastructure management environment. What you cannot see you cannot manage, or even understand, so it is vital for infrastructure stability to have a tool that can constantly discover the state and health of the components in operation.

2. Manage & Control the Infrastructure Environment

Once you know what you have its very easy to compile an accurate inventory of the following:
The environment’s components provide the ability to track hardware.
To manage end-of-life and end‑of‑support.
The hardware threshold management (i.e. Swap-Out device before failure)
To effectively manage the estates operating systems and patch management.

3. Automate Deployment

Corporation’s today place a lot of emphasis on automation therefore, it is very important that when choosing a Network Discovery tool to operate your infrastructure environment, it can integrate seamlessly with your CRM system. Having a consistent view of the infrastructure inventory and services will allow repeatable and consistent deployment of hardware and configuration in order to automate service fulfillment and deployment.

If you’re not using network discovery tool don’t worry were offering the service for absolutely free, just click below and you will be one step closer to improving your network management system.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance Network Security

Why Just Backing Up Your Router Config is the Wrong Thing To Do

One of the most fundamental best practices of any IT organization is to have a backup strategy and system in place for critical systems and devices. This is clearly needed for any disaster recovery situation and most IT departments have definitive plans and even practiced methodologies set in place for such an occurrence.

However what many IT pros don’t always consider is how useful it is to have backups for reasons other than DR and the fact that for most network devices (and especially routers), it is not just the running configuration that should be saved. In fact, there are potentially hundreds of smaller pieces of information that when properly backed up can be used for help with ongoing operational issues.

First, let’s take a look at the traditional device backup landscape, and then let’s explore how this structure should be enhanced to provide additional services and benefits.

Unlike server hard drives, network devices like routers do not usually fall within the umbrella backup systems used for mass data storage. In most cases a specialized system must be put in place for these devices. Each network vendor has special commands that must be used in order to access the device and request / download the configurations.

When looking at these systems it is important to find out where the resulting configurations will be stored. If the system is simply storing the data into an on-site appliance, then it also critical to determine if that appliance itself is being backup into an offsite / recoverable system otherwise the backup are not useful in a DR situation where the backup appliance may also be offline.

It is also important to understand how many backups your system can hold i.e. can you only store the last 10 backups, or maybe only everything in the last 30 days etc. are these configurable options that you can adjust based on your retention requirements? This can be a critical component for audit reporting, as well as when rollback is needed to a previous state (that may not just have been the last state).

Lastly, does the system offer a change report showing what differences exist between selected configurations? Can you see who made the changes and when?

In addition to the “must haves” explored above, I also think there are some advanced features that really can dramatically improve the operational value of a device / router backup system. Let’s look at these below:

Routers and other devices are more than just their config files. Very often they can provide output which describes additional aspects of their operation. To use the common (cisco centric) terminology, you can also get and store the output of a “show” command. This may contain critical information about the devices hardware, software, services, neighbors and more that could not be seen from just the configuration. It can be hugely beneficial to store this output as well as it can be used to help understand how the device is being used, what other devices are connected to it and more.
Any device in a network, especially a core component such as a router should conform to company specific policies for things like access, security etc. Both the main configuration file, as well as the output from the special “show” commands can be used to check the device against any compliance policy your organization has in place.
All backups need to run both on a schedule (we generally see 1x per day as the most common schedule) as well as on an ad-hoc basis when a change is made. This second option is vital to maintaining an up to date backup system. Most changes to devices happen at some point during the normal work day. It is critical that your backup system can be notified (usually via log message) that a change was made and then immediately launch a backup of the device – and potentially a policy compliance check as well.

Long gone are the days where simply logging into a router, getting the running configuration, and storing that in a text file is considered a “backup plan”. Critical network devices need to have the same attention paid them as servers and other IT systems. Now is a good time to revisit your router backup systems and strategies and determine if you are implementing a modern backup approach, as you can see its not just about backing up your router config.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance

New GigaStor Portable 5x Faster

Set up a Mobile Forensics Unit Anywhere

On June 22, Network Instruments announced the launch of its new GigaStor Portable 10 Gb Wire Speed retrospective network analysis (RNA) appliance. The new portable configuration utilizes solid state drive (SSD) technology to stream traffic to disk at full line rate on full-duplex 10 Gb links without dropping packets.

“For network engineers, remotely troubleshooting high-speed networks used to mean leaving powerful RNA tools behind, and relying on a software sniffer and laptop to capture and diagnose problems,” said Charles Thompson, chief technology officer for Network Instruments. “The new GigaStor Portable enables enterprises and service providers with faster links to accurately and quickly resolve issues by having all the packets available for immediate analysis. Additionally, teams can save time and money by minimizing repeat offsite visits and remotely accessing the appliance.”

Quickly Troubleshoot Remote Problems

Without GigaStor Portable’s insight, engineers and security teams may spend hours replicating a network error or researching a potential attack before they can diagnose its cause. GigaStor Portable can be deployed to any remote location to collect and save weeks of packet-level data, which it can decode, analyze, and display. The appliance quickly sifts through data, isolates incidents, and provides extensive expert analysis to resolve issues.

Part of the powerful Observer Performance Management Platform, the GigaStor Portable 10 Gb Wire Speed with SSD provides 6 TB of raw storage capacity, and includes the cabling and nTAP needed to install the appliance on any 10 Gb network and start recording traffic right away.

Forensic capabilities are an important part of any network management solution. Learn more about GigaStor Portable and how RNA can help protect the integrity of your data.

Thanks to Network Instruments for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Performance

NMSaaS Webinar – Stop paying for Network Inventory Software & let NMSaaS do it for FREE.

Please join NMSaaS CTO John Olson for a demonstration of our free Network Discovery, Asset & Inventory Solution.

Wed, Jul 29, 2015 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM CDT

Do any of these problems sound familiar?

My network is complex and I don’t really even know exactly what we have and where it all is.
I can’t track down interconnected problems
I don’t know when something new comes on the network
I don’t know when I need upgrades
I suspect we are paying too much for maintenance

NMSaaS is here to help.

In this webinar you will learn that you can receive the following:

Highly detailed complimentary Network Discovery, Inventory and Topology Service
Quarterly Reports with visibility in 100+ data points including:
- Device Connectivity Information
- Installed Software
- VM’s
- Services / Processes
- TCP/IP Ports in use
- More…
Deliverables – PDF Report & Excel Inventory List

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance

3 Steps to Configure Your Network For Optimal Discovery

All good network monitoring / management begins the same way – with an accurate inventory of the devices you wish to monitor. These systems must be on boarded into the monitoring platform so that it can do its job of collecting KPI’s, backing up configurations and so on. This onboarding process is almost always initiated through a discovery process.

This discovery is carried out by the monitoring system and is targeted at the devices on the network. The method of targeting may vary, from a simple list of IP addresses or host names, to a full subnet discovery sweep, or even by using an exported csv file from another system. However, the primary means of discovery is usually the same for all Network devices, SNMP.

Additional means of onboarding can (and certainly do) exist, but I have yet to see any full-featured management system that does not use SNMP as one of its primary foundations.

SNMP has been around for a long time, and is well understood and (mostly) well implemented in all major networking vendors’ products. Unfortunately, I can tell you from years of experience that many networks are not optimally configured to make use of SNMP and other important configuration options which when setup correctly will optimize the network for a more efficient and ultimately more successful discovery and onboarding process.

Having said that, below are 3 simple steps that should be taken, in order to help maximize your network for optimal discovery.

1) Enable SNMP

Yes it seems obvious to say that if SNMP isn’t enabled then it will not work. But, as mentioned before it still astonishes me how many organizations I work with that still do not have SNMP enabled on all of the devices they should have. These days almost any device that can connect to a network usually has some SNMP support built in. Most networks have SNMP enabled on the “core” devices like Routers / Switches / Servers, but many IT pros many not realize that SNMP is available on non- core systems as well.

Devices like VoIP phones and video conferencing systems, IP connected security cameras, Point of Sale terminals and even mobile devices (via apps) can support SNMP. By enabling SNMP on as many possible systems in the network, the ability to extend the reach of discovery and monitoring has grown incredibly and now gives visibility into the network end-points like never before.

2) Setup SNMP correctly

Just enabling SNMP isn’t enough – the next step is to make sure it is configured correctly. That means removing / changing the default Read Only (RO) community string (which is commonly set by default to “public”) to a more secure string. It is also best practice to use as few community strings as you can. In many large organizations, there can be some “turf wars” over who gets to set these strings on systems. The Server team may have one standard string and the network team has another.

Even though most systems will allow for multiple strings, it is generally best to try to keep these as consistent as possible. This helps prevent confusion when setting up new systems and also helps eliminate unnecessary discovery overhead on the management systems (which may have to try multiple community strings for each device on an initial discovery run). As always, security is important, so you should configure the IP address of the known management server as an allowed SNMP system and block any other systems from being allowed to run an SNMP query against your systems.

3) Enable Layer 2 discovery protocols

In your network, you want much deeper insight into not only what you have, but how it is all connected. One of the best way to get this information is to enable layer 2 (link layer) discovery abilities. Depending on the vendor(s) you have in your network, this may accomplished with a proprietary protocol like the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) or it may be implemented in a generic standard like the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP). In either case, by enabling these protocols, you gain valuable L2 connectivity information like connected MAC addresses, VLAN’s, and more.

By following a few simple steps, you can dramatically improve the results of your management system’s onboarding / discovery process and therefore gain deeper and more actionable information about your network.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance Network Security

Infosim® Global Webinar Day July 30th, 2015 – The Treasure Hunt is On!

How to visualize the state of your network and service infrastructure to uncover the hidden treasures in your data

Join Harald Höhn, Sea Captain and Senior Developer on a perilous treasure hunt on “How to visualize the state of your network and service infrastructure to uncover the hidden treasure in your data”.

This Webinar will provide insight into:

How to speed up your workflows with auto-generated Weather Maps
How to outline complex business processes with Weather Maps
How to uncover the hidden treasures in your data [Live Demo]

But wait, there is more! We are giving away three treasure maps (Amazon Gift Card, value $50) on this Global Webinar Day. In order to join the draw, simply answer the hidden treasure question that will be part of the questionnaire at the end of the Webinar. Good Luck!

Register today watch a recording

A recording of this Webinar will be available to all who register!
(Take a look at our previous Webinars here.)

Thanks to Infosim for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance

Top 10 Key Metrics for NetFlow Monitoring

NetFlow is a feature that was introduced on Cisco routers that provides the ability to collect IP network traffic as it enters or exits an interface. By analyzing the data provided by NetFlow, a network administrator can determine things such as the source and destination of traffic, class of service, and the causes of congestion.

There are numerous key metrics when it comes to Netflow Monitoring:

1-Netflow Top Talkers

The flows that are generating the heaviest system traffic are known as the “top talkers.” The NetFlow Top Talkers feature allows flows to be sorted so that they can be viewed, to identify key users of the network.

2-Application Mapping

Application Mapping lets you configure the applications identified by NetFlow. You can add new applications, modify existing ones, or delete them. It’s also usually possible to associate an IP address with an application to help better track applications that are tied to specific servers.

3-Alert profiles

Alert profiles makes network monitoring using NetFlow easier. It allows for the Netflow system to be watching the traffic and alarming on threshold breaches or other traffic behaviors.

4-IP Grouping

You can create IP groups based on IP addresses and/or a combination of port and protocol. IP grouping is useful in tracking departmental bandwidth utilization, calculating bandwidth costs and ensuring appropriate usage of network bandwidth.

5-Netflow Based Security features

NetFlow provides IP flow information in the network. In the field of network security, IP flow information provided by NetFlow is used to analyze anomaly traffic. NetFlow based anomaly traffic analysis is an appropriate supplement to current signature-based NIDS.

6- Top Interfaces

Included in the Netflow Export information is the interface that the traffic passes through. This can be very useful when trying to diagnose network congestion, especially on lower bandwidth WAN interfaces as well as helping to plan capacity upgrades / downgrades for the future.

7- QoS traffic Monitoring

Most networks today enable some level of traffic prioritization. Multimedia traffic like VoIP and Video which are more susceptible to problems when there are network delays typically are tagged as higher priority than other traffic like web and email. Netflow can track which traffic is tagged with these priority levels. This enables network engineers to make sure that the traffic is being tagged appropriately.

8- AS Analysis

Most Netflow tools are able to also show the AS (Autonomous System) number and well known AS assignments for the IP traffic. This can be very useful in peer analysis as well as watching flows across the “border” of a network. For ISP’s and other large organizations this information can be helpful when performing traffic and network engineering analysis especially when the network is being redesigned or expanded.

9- Protocol analysis

One of the most basic metrics that Netflow can provide is a breakdown of TCP/IP protocols in use on the network like TCP, UDP, ICMP etc. This information is typically combined with port and IP address information to provide a complete view of the applications on the network.

10- Extensions with IPFIX

Although technically not NetFlow, IPFIX is fast becoming the preferred method of “flow-based” analysis. This is mainly due to the flexible structure of IPFIX which allows for variable length fields and proprietary vendor information. This is critical when trying to understand deeper level traffic metrics like HTTP host, URLs, messages and more.

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Management Network Monitoring Network Monitoring Software Network Performance Network Security

NTO Now Provides Twice the Network Visibility

Ixia is proud to announce that we are expanding one of the key capabilities in Ixia xStream platforms, “Double Your Ports,” to our Net Tool Optimizers (NTO) family of products. As of our 4.3 release, this capability to double the number of network and monitor inputs is now available on the NTO platform. If you are not familiar with Double Your Ports, it is a feature that allows you to add additional network or tool ports to your existing NTO by allowing different devices to share a single port. For example, if you have used all of the ports on your NTO but want to add a new tap, you can enable Double Your Ports so that a Net Optics Tap and a monitoring tool can share the same port, utilizing both the RX and TX sides of the port. This is how it works:

Standard Mode

In the standard mode, the ports will behave in a normal manner: when there is a link connection on the RX, the TX will operate. When the RX is not connected, the system assumes the TX link is also not connected (down).

Loopback Mode

When you designate a port to be loopback, the data egressing on the TX side will forward directly to the RX side of the same port. This functionality does not require a loopback cable to be plugged into the port. The packets will not transmit outside of the device even if a cable is connected.

Simplex Mode

When you designate a port to be in simplex mode, the port’s TX state is not dependent on the RX state. In the standard mode, when the RX side of the port goes down, the TX side is disabled. If you assign a port mode to simplex, the TX state is up when there is a link on the TX even when there is no link on the RX. You could use a simplex cable to connect a TX of port A to an RX of port B. If port A is in simplex mode, the TX will transmit even when the port A RX is not connected.

To “double your ports” you switch the port into simplex mode, then use simplex fiber cables and connect the TX fiber to a security or monitoring tool and the RX fiber to a tap or switch SPAN port. On NTO, the AFM ports such as the AFM 16 support simplex mode allowing you to have 32 connections per module: 16 network inputs and 16 monitor outputs simultaneously (with advanced functions on up to 16 of those connections). The Ixia xStream’s 24 ports can be used as 48 connections: 24 network inputs and 24 monitor outputs simultaneously.

The illustration below shows the RX and TX links of two AFM ports on the NTO running in simplex mode. The first port’s RX is receiving traffic from the Network Tap and the TX is transmitting to a monitoring tool.

The other port (right hand side on NTO) is interconnected to the Network Tap with its RX using a simplex cable whereas its TX is unused (dust-cap installed).

With any non-Ixia solution, this would have taken up three physical ports on the packet broker. With Ixia’s NTO and xStream packet brokers we are able to double up the traffic and save a port for this simple configuration, with room to add another monitoring tool where the dust plug is shown. If you expand this across many ports you can double your ports in the same space!

Click here to learn more about Ixia’s Net Tool Optimizer family of products.

Additional Resources:

Ixia xStream

Ixia NTO solution

Ixia AFM

Solution Focus Category

Network Visibility

Thanks to Ixia for the article.

Network Access Network Management Network Performance Network Security Network Taps