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How to select the right network packet broker vendor

  • 4 min read

Today’s networks must support ever-increasing traffic volumes, higher speeds and increased requirements for security, analytics, and compliance. Network Packet Brokers make monitoring and security platforms more effective by feeding them data from the entire network stack. These products broker network traffic from multiple SPAN/TAP ports, manipulating this data and sending only relevant data to the monitoring devices which allows the more efficient use of monitoring devices.

Until a while ago the NPB architecture was entirely based on proprietary hardware. However, nowadays some enterprises opt for generic white boxes because they believe this would save money and provide them scale needed for the growing networks. Unfortunately, the white boxes do not offer the best solution because you end up getting limited features because not all hardware support different software. To add to this, when you have any issue with the box, you end up with blame game because you do not know if it is hardware related or software related. In the end, you waste time and lose money with the generic product.

Cubro’s G5 network packet brokers offer superior performance at the same price as any other network packet broker and offer loads of advanced features which are not available on any network packet brokers in the market. Most importantly, you get dedicated technical support from us instead of going back and forth to your software and hardware vendors.

  

 

Cubro G5 Network Packet Broker up to 32 x 400 Gbit 

Commercial Advantages:

  • ​Layer 2 to Layer 7 support
  • No port restrictions
  • No blocked third-party optical modules
  • No extra cost for the port licence
  • No extra cost for software
  • Fair support cost
  • Software and hardware from one hand
  • More than a simple aggregator

 

Advanced Applications:

  • ​ERSPAN termination
  • VNtag stripping
  • Packet Slicing in-line rate on all ports
  • Timestamping
  • PTP time synchronisation for time stamping: software implementation
  • Keyword search in packet header for advanced filtering
  • 25 Gbit support
  • 24MB memory for bursting protection
  • No packet loss (tested)
  • SerDes tuning for third-party optical modules
  • Open API
  • GTP inner IP hashing (symmetric and asymmetric) and filtering
  • GTP inner IP dual stack support
  • Up to 60 ports per load balancing group
  • High-end host controller
  • Thousands of rules (8000 in IPv4 and 4000 in IPv6 full 5 tuple)
  • P4 language support advanced protocol detection language

 

The most performant host controller 

The design of this packet pusher appliance consists of two major parts – the switching chip and the host controller. The host controller holds the web application, the CLI and the control function of the switching chip. The performance of the host controller is important in a higher layer, especially where support from classical CPU is needed.

The highlighting features include ARM multi-core CPU, 64GB Memory and M.2 SSD/HDD up to 2TB. We can capture traffic and store it on the SSD.

Cubro Sonic Software Design

The future of the EXA32100 will be SONiC as Network-on-Chip Solution (NoC) based on Ubuntu Linux for easy software development.

​All enterprises with large, complex networks often find it challenging overwhelming to manage their networks to minimise outages and performance issues. The enterprises MUST look to secure and manage their growing network traffic demands, improve productivity and save MTTR by having complete network visibility. Cubro Network Visibility enables organisations to meet these challenges with solutions that deliver high ROI, cutting-edge features, and exceptional reliability.