Ixia is announcing support for OpenFlow SDN in Ixia’s ControlTower architecture. Our best-in-breed Visibility Architecture now extends data center visibility by taking advantage of a plethora of qualified OpenFlow hardware. ControlTower is our innovative platform for distributed visibility launched nearly two years ago. This solution manages a cluster of our Net Tool Optimizers (NTOs) as if you were managing a single logical NTO. At the time of its launch, we leveraged Software Defined Networkin...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog on how to use a network lifecycle approach to improve your network security. I wanted to come back and revisit this as I’ve had a few people ask me why the visibility architecture is so important. They had (incorrectly, IMO) been told by others to just focus on the security architecture and everything else would work out fine. The reason you need a visibility architecture in place is because if you are attacked, or breached, how will you know? During a DDoS ...

We work with more than 40 of the top 50 carriers worldwide, as well as many of their largest customers and the companies who provide infrastructure technology for their networks. We’re the “application performance and security resilience” company – we help you make sure technology works the way you expect it to out of the gate, and keeps on doing it throughout the deployment lifecycle. Today’s mobile subscribers are what we call “tough customers”: they expect instant availability and high perfor...

With the amount of sustained security attacks launched at enterprises over the last five-plus years, network security has become an increasingly important topic—right along with how new methodologies and technologies can be used to combat the proliferation of attacks. As daily news stories document, enterprises are struggling with preventing breaches in their network security. According to Symantec, 2013 was the “Year of the Mega Breach.” The total number of breaches was 62% higher than the leve...

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading provider of application performance and security resilience solutions, announced an update to its ControlTower distributed network visibility platform that includes support for OpenFlow enabled switches from industry leading manufacturers. ControlTower OpenFlow support has at present been interoperability tested with Arista, Dell and HP OpenFlow enabled switches. “Dell is a leading advocate for standards such as Openflow on our switching platforms to enable rich an...

Optimizing NFV in Wireless Networks The promise of virtualization looms large: greater ability to fast-track services with lower costs, and, ultimately, less complexity. As virtualization evolves to encompass network functions and more, service delivery will increasingly benefit from using a common virtual compute and storage infrastructure. Ultimately, providers will realize: Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by replacing dedicated appliances with commodity hardware and software-based control...

Visibility Into Quality What happens when we offload voice traffic to Wi-Fi? As user demand for high-quality anytime, anywhere communications continues growing exponentially, mobile providers are evolving core networks to higher capacity technologies such as 4G LTE. As they do so, mobile network optimization increasingly relies on detecting and preventing potential performance issues. Accomplishing this detection becomes even more challenging, given the expanding mix of tools, probes, interfaces...

Your network infrastructure exists for one reason: to deliver the services and applications that matter to your customers who demand access now, without interruption. Anything that affects your ability to reach customers has a serious impact on your bottom line. High-quality application performance requires real-time awareness of what’s happening on the network. Network operators need to monitor, analyze, and report on transactions throughout the IT environment—whether physical, virtual, or in t...

For most every enterprise, the network is your business. Your network and applications are what connects you to your customers. Maintaining network vitality for an optimal user experience is key to business growth and profitability. But today’s networks are under tremendous pressures. User expectations for high performance and innovative applications are ever-increasing. So too are the frequency, magnitude, and sophistication of security attacks that your adversaries are launching to attempt to ...

Ixia announced enhancements to its network visibility product portfolio, which extends the capabilities of its Visibility Architecture™. With the latest releases incorporating Ixia’s Application and Threat Intelligence, comprehensive solutions come together to meet the needs of enterprises for simplified and actionable network insight. In an increasingly dynamic environment, network administrators are striving for complete network visibility. This level of awareness requires a robust visibility ...

In parts one and two of this blog, I answered an often asked customer question – “What can really be done to improve network visibility?” – with discussions on data and packet conditioning and advanced filtering. In the third part of this blog series, I’ll reveal a third set of features that can further improve network visibility and deliver even more verifiable benefits. Too quickly summarize this multi-part blog covers an in-depth view of various features that deliver true network visibility b...

In part 1 of this blog, I mentioned that our customers often ask the question “What can really be done to improve network visibility?” I answered the question with regards to data and packet conditioning. In the 2nd part of this discussion, I’ll continue to answer the question with a second set of features that will deliver even more verifiable benefits to improve network visibility. I’ll provide you an in-depth view of features that will deliver true benefits. There are 5 fundamental feature se...

“What can really be done to improve network visibility?” This is a question that our customers often ask us. They’ve heard about this and that and something else but are often left confused as to what capabilities actually exist in the market to solve their network visibility problems. In this multi-part blog, I’ll provide you an in-depth view of features that will deliver true benefits. There are 5 fundamental feature sets that we’ll cover: Data and packet conditioning Advanced packet filtering...

Ixia's Visibility Architecture solution easily integrates into data center environments to help enterprises and service providers achieve greater visibility into and performance for rapidly growing complex networks. Today's networks continue to grow in size and complexity, presenting new challenges for IT and network administrators. More users are connecting using multiple mobile devices consuming more data from more sources – and many of those apps are hosted on virtualized infrastructure. What...

High-stakes Monitoring Global finance moves fast. When data and transactions don't take place as smoothly or securely as expected, the company's revenues and reputation may instantly suffer, causing valued customers to seek more reliable providers. Regulatory requirements are also growing, creating a greater need for security and compliance monitoring. To mitigate risk and ensure performance, Ixia's network visibility solutions deliver the ongoing data needed to dynamically detect, avoid, and ad...

Protect Your Critical Traffic with Fail-Safe Inline Security In our rapidly evolving landscape, networks must deliver more services and carry ever-higher volumes of multiprotocol traffic as data rates soar. Voice, data, and streaming video now travel on one wire, raising many security and compliance issues. All of this dynamic activity calls for inline monitoring and security tools to assess every packet and thwart incoming threats before they can manifest and do their damage. Inline monitoring ...

The key concept is that security isn’t something you purchase, it’s something you need to do – preferably on an everyday basis. There is no perfect security product that can stop intruders in their tracks. It needs to be a concerted process of best practices that are put into place and maintained. The first step is to put a visibility architecture in place that supports your security plan. A visibility architecture is essentially a cost-effective design that provides access to network traffic, i...

A Corporate Conundrum With possession being 9/10th of the law, the bring your own device (BYOD) trend creates a conundrum for enterprises. BYOD is the policy of allowing employees to bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access company resources such as email, file servers, and databases. It is also fairly common to mix personal and professional data on single device or across multiple mobile options. BYOD is becoming increasingly prevalent in enterprises, ...

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) announced the industry’s only carrier-grade, high-density, 40 Gbps network monitoring switch to achieve NEBS Level 3 certification for operation in mission-critical telecommunications environments. This certification complements Ixia’s comprehensive portfolio of network monitoring switches designed to provide increased visibility into telecommunications and service provider networks, such as 4G LTE. The NEBS-certified Ixia Anue Net Tool Optimizer® solutions help network engin...

Ixia Network Visibility Solutions welcomes a guest blogger today, Tim O’Neill from LoveMyTool. Network engineers and managers need to think about today’s compliance requirements and the limitations of conventional data access methods. This article is focused on TAPs versus port mirroring/SPAN technology. SPAN is not all bad, but one must be aware of its limitations. As managed switches are an integral part of the infrastructure, one must be careful not to establish a failure point. Understanding...