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Laying The Groundwork For 10GbE Networks

The networking industry is in a period of transition now as 10GbE networks are becoming increasingly popular as a way to deliver bandwidth for demanding loads. Network analysis vendors, however, argue that raw bandwidth alone isn’t enough to solve the problem of modern networking bottlenecks. Rather, they argue that networking analysis technology in the 10GbE […]

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SMK

Sean Michael Kerner

Apr 28, 2008

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The networking industry is in a period of transition now as 10GbE networks
are becoming increasingly popular as a way to deliver bandwidth for
demanding loads.

Network analysis vendors, however, argue that raw bandwidth
alone isn’t enough to solve the problem of modern networking bottlenecks.
Rather, they argue that networking analysis technology in the 10GbE era is
more important than ever.

What it boils down to is analyzing network traffic at the packet level to
ensure application performance. Without that level of understanding and
analysis, vendors argue, the very survival of a company’s network could
be at risk and with the 10GbE, the stakes are even higher than ever.

“You need to have analysis with 10GbE links because of volume of
conversations,” Eileen Haggerty, director of product marketing at Netscout,
told InternetNews.com. “So if there is degradation in a 10GbE link
the potential impacts can be catastrophic for some enterprises.”

For example, Haggerty noted that if a 10GbE link in a high volume trading
environment had issues, there could well be direct financial impact.

Netscout is currently rolling out its latest network analysis technology
called nGenius K2 to help network administrators understand what’s going on
in their networks.

The solution benefit from the integration of Network
General’s Sniffer technology, which Netscout acquired
last year for $205 million.

Haggerty noted that the former Network General assets have now been fully
integrated into Netscout’s portfolio. She added that with nGenius K2 the
goal is to go from simply dealing with incident management to offering
performance management across a network.

Network analysis vendor WildPackets is also expanding its product lineup
with its soon-to-be-released Watchpoint product. Watchpoint collects
statistical data from multiple sources and aggregates it to get an
enterprise wide view of a network from a single dashboard.

“We’re really talking about distributed network forensics,” Tony Barbagallo, vice president of marketing, explained to InternetNews.com. “Being able
to sift through the packets in real time let’s you do root cause analysis on
any network problems and issue that may occur.”

WildPackets is also rolling out set of 10GbE-capable solutions for network
analysis, all driven by market demand.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.