Apart from improving network monitoring, application and network performance management, service assurance, customer experience management, network security, network and capacity planning, troubleshooting and diagnostics, network availability, business continuity, speed and flexibility of IT deployments, easier network upgrades and maintenance, increasing the lifespan and ROI of network tools and infrastructure, all while reducing the costs and TCO of network monitoring, security and analytics tools and network infrastructure ?
Network visibility solutions originally consisted of network TAPs and aggregation TAP products which were deployed mainly for Tapping and Aggregation use cases that allowed the migration of expensive, inconsistent distributed network monitoring tools to centralized tool farms that reduced cost, improved network monitoring and removed network blind spots.
Many technologies have evolved over time and so too have network visibility solutions. For example, the mobile phone has evolved from a nonessential device with limited service coverage that was used for only making telephone calls to become an essential device that delivers high value for many use cases including telephone calls, texts, internet connectivity, online applications, office applications, calendar, music player, video player and camera – and many more.
In the same way, visibility solutions have evolved from tapping and aggregation use cases to delivering many essential use cases, including those listed above, which significantly contribute to organizations’ ability to retain existing customers, win new customers, manage costs, improve data security, protect shareholder value, achieve and maintain regulatory compliance, and improve an organization’s ability to rapidly respond to changing business conditions.
Visibility solutions now include physical and virtual Advanced Network Packet Brokers, Probes, Bypass TAPs, and Software Defined Visibility in addition to network TAPs and aggregation TAP products. They have become essential components of network monitoring, security and business continuity solutions that are needed for the successful outcomes of major contemporary IT initiatives.
IT initiatives such as 5G/4G/3G Customer Experience Management and Service Assurance, Digital Transformation, Data Security, Virtualized Data Centres, Software Defined Networking and High Performance Networks introduce new, incremental network ‘blind spots’. These can hide network performance or security risks while their successful execution and ongoing operation are fundamental to a Service Provider or Enterprise organization achieving its business and operational objectives.
So, apart from removing network blind spots to allow effective network monitoring and security, filtering network traffic to reduce network tool loading, subscriber traffic filtering to improve troubleshooting and diagnostics, blocking selected network traffic to improve network optimization, deduplication, encapsulation and decapsulation, load balancing, automatic network tool bypass and restore, tunnel termination, metadata generation and export, Deep Packet Inspection, packet slicing, inner IP filtering and correlation, SIP/RTP filtering and correlation, timestamping, REGEX search, decryption, virtual and physical deployments, mitigating network and tools’ speed and media disparity, supporting 40/100/400G high speed interfaces – what has network visibility ever done for us!!!