Scalability in Network Architecture – Step Towards Future-proof Network Monitoring

There is a surge in the network traffic and no industry is immune to being overwhelmed by data. Network visibility is a requirement for all industries ranging from financial corporations, telecom companies, shipping/logistics firms, retailers, pharmaceuticals, insurance, government and healthcare. And all are vulnerable to becoming constrained due to scalability issues.

With non- scalable tools, companies have limitations of the switches and therefore the architecture does not allow them to address all their network visibility concerns. As a result, they end up investing a huge amount in changing the entire network architecture.

If a company’s existing network monitoring setup consists of a limited number of network TAPs feeding a monitoring switch, the system provides limited visibility and is not scalable. Such a system is not capable of addressing regular microbursts in network traffic. The architecture also generates substantial duplicate packets that the switch is not equipped to eliminate, creating challenges in monitoring. In such cases, when a company has a requirement for installing new TAPs and new port SPANs to accommodate the network expansion, the old switch is not able to handle the load.

A scalable solution which offers multi-stage filtering, de-duplication and other features help a network operate more efficiently. Customers can ease these problems by building scalable network monitoring solutions.

• Tools which can intelligently aggregate data and precisely channel them to the appropriate monitoring tools without missing or dropping data, provide 100-percent visibility. Instead of using several TAPs, SPANs and tools, a scalable tool can gain 100 percent visibility on all data passing through it.
• With a scalable solution, it is easy to add ports with the change in network traffic. Network expansion is easy to accommodate if there is room for adding more ports. A solution that consists of small boxes with low port count might patch a momentary need, but in the process of fixing one problem complexity has been added to the network.
• As networks move from 1G to 10G speeds; and from 40G and 100G speeds; data centers would need new hardware if the ports on its monitoring switches aren’t able to handle the increase. This can cause network unavailability which can lead to dropped packets and loss of visibility. Data centers need tools which provide an easy migration path to future high-speed technologies.  

Conclusion

Scalability and simplicity seem to go hand-in-hand. An elegant, well-designed network architecture makes scalable network monitoring possible. Cubro’s network packet brokers enable cost-effective network traffic scaling. With these network packet brokers, customers benefit from cost-effectiveness, scalability, and flexibility. Cubro’s advanced NPBs offer centralized visibility architectures that demand high performance, scale, and advanced traffic optimization features.