Passive, Zero-latency Unit Deploys In-line on 10 Gigabit Links; Monitoring,
Filtering, and Accurate Analysis at Line Speed – All for About $9K
cPacket Networks announced a “smart” network tap designed for 10 Gigabit networks that can provide total traffic visibility and fine-grained filtering at line speed, with zero latency. The 1U rack-mountable device, called the “cTap”, inaugurates a new class of “supertaps” that provide capabilities never before seen in a standalone device or in high-end network routers and switches.
The cTap uses cPacket’s unique complete packet inspection technology – the line-rate analysis of 100% of the headers and data packets flowing through a link – to provide behavior monitoring, filtering, and selective duplication of the 10 Gigabit traffic. Providing selected subsets of the traffic in a form compatible with existing network analysis tools, cTap can perform a granular bandwidth reduction to 1G and below. Detailed latency and jitter measurement for video and voice applications are made possible because of the accurate time stamps.
“The use of high-speed, intelligent – and most significantly – programmable monitoring and inspection devices, is becoming more important as today’s needs change quickly to encompass new business models and new threats,” said Travis Dawson, Sr. Member Technical Staff, Sprint Advanced Technology Labs. “The cTap is designed for protection and monitoring of fast moving and distributed networks.”
Dr. Luca Deri, the highly-regarded leader of the ntop open source project for developing a high speed traffic analysis platform, and frequently-published computer science lecturer at the University of Pisa, agrees. “The cTap, with its complete packet inspection capability, is quite a breakthrough for network administrators who are increasingly buying 10 Gigabit network switches that offer no visibility or control over their 10G traffic,” said Deri. “Until now, attempting to get even a subset of the functionality that the cTap offers was not possible. Now, it can be done, turnkey. The total visibility into high-speed 10G networks now can be so easy and cost effective that the use of such ‘supertaps’ pervasively in the network will be an important, new, ‘best practice’.”
Simple Drop-in Deployment
The cTap deploys passively in-line into any 10G link and will not disrupt traffic if power is lost. Two 10G fiber Data ports and four Duplicate ports – two 10G and two 1G Ethernet – are provided, as well as one dedicated “management” port, used for remote access to data and for configuration. Each of the Duplicate ports can be configured as a “smart span port”, controlled individually by the user from a simple Web interface. Specific traffic can be replicated to these ports, which enables effective remote capture, analysis, and trouble shooting, over the network. Moreover, for turnkey use with today’s ubiquitous Gigabit Ethernet LANs, the cTap will selectively filter, aggregate, and/or reduce the high-speed traffic in the 10G link such that it may be presented on either of the 1G monitor ports. It also features built-in and user-configurable statistics and counters that can be aggregated and correlated.
The browser-based Web interface is easy to use, allowing administrators to set up detailed traffic profiles from simple templates. This can include selective filtering, based upon both parsing the headers and pattern searching anywhere in the payload.
The capabilities of the cTap are made possible by cPacket’s revolutionary complete packet inspection chip, which has been field-proven in production service (see: CPacket Technology Protects Show-floor Network at Interop for Third Time, October 17, 2007).
Sixteen cPacket-designed, in-line network probes helped protect show participants from malicious or unintended network disruptions, and performed flawlessly. The prototypes were actually “reference designs”, whose underlying technology is intended for use by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that build network monitoring and control products powered by cPacket’s chips.
The cTap itself is also conceived as a reference design, but due to immediate market demand cPacket is offering the unit directly. cTap and its derivatives will also be available through cPacket’s OEM partners. cTap is available immediately, and a complete data sheet can be found at http://www.cpacket.com/cTap10G_pb.pdf.
Pricing in multi-unit quantities is in the vicinity of $9,000.
About cPacket
cPacket Networks is an emerging leader in chips and technologies that offers
breakthrough, “complete” packet inspection, at a fraction of the complexity, power, or cost of preexisting approaches. It provides manufacturers of routers, switches and other network appliances a low-impact means to easily drop game-changing, wire-speed active network traffic analysis and response directly into their existing or planned designs – whether targeted at the service providers, the enterprise, or the small office. The exploding use of networks for media-centric applications makes the availability of truly pervasive deep packet inspection timely and crucial.
cPacket was founded in 2003 and is located in Mountain View, CA.
For more information, please visit their website: http://www.cpacket.com