Not all NPBs Are the Same
In the past few weeks, we have been discussing the ATLAS series of service nodes. One of the main use cases is as an adjunct to a network packet broker (NPB). For those not familiar, an NPB is an appliance or chassis that aggregates tapped network traffic and filters the data before it is sent to various analytics tools for evaluation. Major NPB vendors are companies such as Gigamon and Ixia (now part of Keysight), but there are also smaller more cost-effective vendors such as Garland Technology.
NPBs serve a vital function within an enterprise, telco or government network but there is not one size NPB that fits all needs. As a result, customers must decide on exactly which features, and functions are crucial for their operations. For example, a hospital or financial company may be particularly sensitive to data privacy concerns due to regulations and therefore masking personally identifiable information (PII) is a fundamental requirement. Whereas another entity may be focused solely on security concerns.
NPB customers should evaluate the entire market and in many cases less feature rich NPBs from companies such as Garland Technology are perfectly adequate and very cost effective. And if there are specific point features such as data deduplication that are not available in the NPB you choose, no need to worry, they can be seamlessly augmented with an ATLAS series service node.
For more details on how to augment your NPB please contact us at [email protected]