Gigamon is adding NetFlow generation capabilities to its Unified Visibility Fabric. The NetFlow Generation application will create NetFlow records, then send the information to one or multiple NetFlow collectors or analyzers.
NetFlow is a simple way to derive basic information about things like traffic types, usage patterns, top talkers and top applications across systems.
Gigamon said that NetFlow Generation can significantly improve the efficiency of the network itself by assuming the processing necessary to generate NetFlow information that had previously been dedicated within the switch, thereby reducing the burden to the network. The records from the NetFlow Generation application can be exported to multiple collectors concurrently, providing a single flow source for business-critical management applications such as security, billing, capacity planning, etc.
“The NetFlow Generation application is a new and very interesting offering for our customers,” said Shehzad Merchant, Chief Strategy Officer at Gigamon. “This application is unique because it centralizes NetFlow Generation, offloads this compute intensive job from the network switches and routers, and does it effectively at high throughput rates for both sampled and unsampled traffic. By making NetFlow Generation an application integral to the Visibility Fabric, all the benefits of Flow Mapping®, filtering, replication, can be applied in conjunction with the NetFlow Generation capability, providing a very fine granularity of control. This is really an industry first for the monitoring space.”
The NetFlow Generation application is a licensable software application starting at $4,995 and is targeted for availability in Q1 of 2014.
http://www.gigamon.com/visibility-fabric-architecture
Gigamon's Visibiilty Fabric Architecture, which features an Application layer and a Services layer, goes beyond interconnecting testing tools to network traffic by providing traffic intelligence across physical, virtual and future SDN infrastructure. At the Applications layer, Gigamon is updating its de-duplication capability and adding new FlowVUE and GTP correlation capabilities for mobile traffic. At the Services layer, Gigamon is enhancing its header stripping capability while adding new adaptive packet filtering. The architecture is designed to handle millions of traffic flows across thousands of endpoints.
The enhancements and new applications for the Unified Visibility Fabric include:
- GTP correlation application -- provides the ability to filter and forward correlated subscriber traffic streams that are encapsulated using the GPRS Tunneling Protocol, or GTP, within 3G/4G/LTE environments. GTP correlation utilizes stateful subscriber filtering and forwarding to understand and maintain subscriber-specific sessions, thus helping to ensure Quality of Experience (QoE) as well as reliable accounting, billing and subscriber management.
- FlowVUE application -- provides active, subscriber-aware flow sampling to intelligently forward only the most relevant traffic to the tools. FlowVUE intelligently manages Big Data traffic, enabling carriers to connect monitoring tools that otherwise would not be able to handle the volume of traffic.
- Adaptive Packet Filtering -- providing the ability to look for content anywhere in the packet and make intelligent filtering and forwarding decisions. Filtering criteria includes advanced encapsulation protocols and/or inner packet contents beyond Layer 4. These updates enable basic application identification and protocol-aware filtering for packet filtering and distribution.
- De-duplication Application enhancements -- including IPv6 de-duplication, as well as support for visibility in Cisco FabricPath environments and IP fragmentation awareness.
