Keysight Technologies, a manufacturer of network packet brokers (NPBs) and a solution provider to improve network visibility and security, recently announced a pair of 400 Gig products.
Packet brokers intelligently move traffic to various security and monitoring tools that require network information. Without NPB, all data would be sent to all devices, which requires a product like a firewall to preprocess the data before analysis. Given the cost of these devices, this can be the most expensive way to deploy security and management tools.
Many organizations lack detailed network visibility of the network, which is critical when it comes to application performance and network security. Organizations used to have specialized security tools such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), monitoring tools and web proxies, etc. Today, cybersecurity is a network of many tools. across the network, all of which require different data sets. With so much data being generated across networks, it’s important to have access to the right data for the right toolkit.
I recently spoke with Taran Singh, VP of Product at Keysight, about the importance of packet brokers and how the company’s next-generation products eliminate blind spots in high-speed networks. complex, high. Here are the highlights of the ZKast interview, conducted in conjunction with eWEEK eSPEAKS.
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- NPB’s data pre-processing capabilities reduce the complexity of medium and large network and security environments. This gives IT and SecOps teams full visibility into what’s happening in their network instead of having to throttle or limit data based on tool performance. The more tools a company has, the more value NPB brings.
- A package broker aggregates all data across the enterprise and filters traffic based on the type of tools an organization has deployed. To use analogy, it’s like a traffic cop for different types of traffic. For example, if a company has an email stack full of security tools, the package broker will filter the email traffic and deliver it to that stack.
- Verticals have needs that generic package brokers cannot address. Some Keysight package brokers are designed for financial markets and high frequency trading. Others specialize in the 4G/5G carrier correlation space, where subscriber correlation must occur for data coming from the cellular network. Then in the enterprise, package brokers are customized based on the type of application the companies use.
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- Recently, Keysight introduced two new full-featured 400 Series bundle brokers for businesses and service providers. As more organizations are moving towards adopting a high-speed network stack, package brokers are flexible in supporting speeds from 10 gigs to 400 gigs. They scale as the needs of the business or service provider change.
- The first product, the Vision Edge 400S, offers traffic aggregation with advanced tunneling, internet protocol (IP) header filtering, load balancing, and timestamps. The second product, the Vision 400, comes with innovative security monitoring features, such as packet handling for complex overlay networks.
- Unique to this product line is the ability to interpret different overlay protocols across multiple ports. They support both non-returning-zero (NRZ) and pulse amplitude 4 modulation (PAM4) standards for maximum gate density. This is something Keysight has never offered before. The 400 Series plan brokers offer a view of multiple links per unit and can be upgraded to higher network speeds.
- For organizations that are investing in cybersecurity tools, Keysight recommends making sure these tools see all the data going through the network. This can be achieved by implementing packet brokers and automating cybersecurity stacks. The artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities that power today’s cybersecurity tools can work in conjunction with package brokers to provide full visibility, as so nothing gets through the back door.
