"Enter the Visibility Architecture" "Buying more tools to deal with spiraling demands is counter-productive – it’s like trying to simplify a problem by increasing complexity. Visibility merits its own architecture, capable of addressing packet access and packet stream management. A visibility architecture that collects, manages, and distributes packet streams for monitoring and analysis is ideal for cost-savings, reliability, and resilience. The economic advantages of such end to-end visibility ...

A virtual architecture is one of the fastest growing aspects of the data center these days. There has been considerable adoption over the last several years. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 server virtualization, virtualized x86 server workloads passed the 70% mark in 2014. This is a big surge from the approximately 50% mark held in 2012. While the market is surging with increased adoption, best practices need to be implemented to prevent rework and aggravation down the road. As ...

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Exposing The Ghost In The Virtual Machine), virtualization has been a great success story. At the same time, it holds hidden dangers that need to be managed. I want to take a couple minutes to outline those dangers and how to overcome them. So, here are the dangers that can be hidden in a virtualized data center: Potential security issues due unknown malware Potential outages due to lack of proper performance data Regulatory compliance issues due to lack...

Ixia is proud to announce the new Ixia Net Optics iBypass 3 Switch. This switch sets a new standard for flexibility, efficiency, and usability in copper bypass switching by supporting up to eight bypass switches in 1U – 4 times the density of our last gigbabit copper bypass switch. In addition to space efficiency, the iBypass 3 achieves class-leading power savings of 48% over the last generation of bypass switch! Ixia bypass switches provide a permanent and trouble-free access port for in-line n...

Virtualization continues to be an important data center success story. This technology has reduced physical plant hardware footprints, power costs, and cooling costs – significantly improving the total cost of ownership for the data center. At the same time, however, virtualization technology has also introduced a set of problems. These problems have decreased the visibility into what is happening within the virtual network, and can be summarized as follows: Lack of visibility hides potential se...

Optimal Visibility and Control of Your Data Center Ixia’s portfolio provides complete network visibility into physical and virtual networks, improves network security and optimizes monitoring tool performance. The Anue NTO ensures that each monitoring tool gets exactly the right data needed for analysis. This improves the way you manage your data center and maximizes return on investment. What Our Customers Say “The Anue NTO makes my life easier. It makes complex data monitoring simple and allow...

In our area of technology, we often think of our products in terms of how they compare to the rest of the products in the same market segment. Maybe we can highlight one facet of a unique feature and point out how nobody else offers it – or at least not in that way. It is tempting to compare features line-by-line when you have competitors who offer products that are generally similar. But now I have the opportunity to talk about a market where nobody else has gone. Ixia can show something that i...

The Phantom Virtualization Tap™ (Phantom vTap™) v3.5 release is now available. This software solution provides IT monitoring staff access to packet data in virtualized data centers, allowing you to pinpoint performance issues and improve network security. With this capability, you can remove virtualized data center blind spots by exposing the approximately 80% of hidden inter-VM ("east-west") traffic that exists in this environment and that raises the risk of undetected threats or perf...

IT needs end-to-end visibility, meaning tool access to any point in the physical and virtual network, and it has to be scalable and easy to manage, says Jason Echols, IXIA Networking is a rapidly evolving and changing landscape. We've quickly moved from parsing bits and bytes from workstation to workstation to providing powerful applications and services to millions of consumers. Speed and bandwidth requirements have grown exponentially, new traffic types appear daily, and now a functioning netw...

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is perhaps the most profound paradigm shift facing the networking industry. In carrier networks, proven functions such as switching, routing, firewall, and other security elements migrate from proven hardware platforms to unproven virtualized servers controlled by software to gain efficiency and flexibility. Carriers worldwide agree on the need and vision for virtualization, but may still struggle to quantify the benefits, understand practical migration ste...

Application intelligence (the ability to monitor packets based on application type and usage) is the next evolution in network visibility. It can be used to dynamically identify all applications running on a network. Distinct signatures for known and unknown applications can be identified, captured, and passed on to specialized monitoring tools in order to provide network managers a complete view of their network. In addition, well-designed visibility solutions will gather additional (contextual...

Good Decisions Reduce Risk The financial industry is at the forefront of network technology. The traditional image of bankers and financial traders is really an anachronism. The reality is that the financial industry, from retail banking to high speed trading, is at the cutting edge of network innovation – for better or for worse. Whether adopting new technologies to allow customers broad-based mobile access, squeezing out the last few nanoseconds of latency, or providing air-tight security, net...

Business networks continue to respond to user and business demands, such as, access to more data, bring your own device (BYOD), virtualisation and the continued growth of the Internet of Things. Historically much of the traffic that runs through these networks has been known to network administrators but access to application and user data remains lacking. Application intelligence - the ability to monitor application flows based on application type - provides the insight that is desperately requ...

A visibility architecture is essential for security, network and integrated, service-oriented operations teams to establish and maintain a continuous awareness of activity, health, and performance of applications and infrastructure. Such awareness is only possible with continuous, reliable network visibility. But this is not an easy task when network and security professionals must ensure security and proactively meet performance expectations in dynamic, virtualized environments with increasingl...

With the end user dependence on complex network applications and architecture makes it more important then ever that network managers understand what, how, and when traffic is traversing the network. Network monitoring is the increasingly powerful connected set of tools used in controlling, maintaining, and optimizing networks.  A network management system #NMS is a set of tools that allow a network operator to supervise the individual components of a network. Network management system...

The Network Visibility Operating System (NVOS) v4.2 release is now available for download to current Net Tool Optimizer® (NTO) customers at the Ixia Customer Portal. Partners can find the MIBS files and user guide on Ixia Partner Portal product section. This new software update supports the following NTO models: NTO 5288, NTO 5293, and ControlTower (NTO 5260, 5263 and 5268.) What is New Advanced Feature Module (AFM16) enhancements New FabricPath stripping feature Expanded de-duplication con...

The Net Optics Director family of smart filtering appliances (Network Packet Brokers) directs traffic of interest to monitoring tools in order to relieve oversubscription, leverage tool investment across groups, and centralize monitoring in the NOC. As part of the new Director 7.8 software release, we are introducing several new key features for the Director and Director Pro product lines: Port behavior configuration options are enabled for customers: Previously, network ports were bi-directiona...

Today's networks are growing in both size and complexity, presenting new challenges for IT and network administrators. More mobile devices are now connecting to more data from more sources—and much of that is due to virtualization. IT challenges are further complicated by increasingly high customer expectations for always onaccess and immediate application response. This complexity creates network “blind spots” where latent errors germinate, and pre-attack activity lurks. Blind spots are commonl...

What is a Tap? Test Access Ports or Taps are primarily used to optimize ITs ability to easily and passively monitor a network link. They are normally placed between any two network devices, including switches, routers, and firewalls to provide network and security personnel a connection for monitoring devices. Protocol analyzers, RMON probes and intrusion detection and prevention systems can now be easily connected to and removed from the network when needed. By using a Tap, you also eliminate t...

Between data centres, clouds and physical servers, enterprises are seeing rapidly growing complex networks. With this ever-expanding infrastructure comes the issue of visibility as data slips into blind spots when the network grows, which can be a stumbling point for businesses. Roark Pollock, Ixia VP of Marketing, Network Visibility Solutions, spoke to CBR about how Ixia is battling the blind spots with its new Visibility Architecture solution. Visibility Architecture is being launched to 'help...