cPacket Networks and SMC Networks jointly developed "smart” plug-in modules for SMC's 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching solutions designed to offer real time, wire speed network visibility and management at an 10 gigabits per second.
The cost-effective modules, which are designed around cPacket's unique "complete packet inspection” chip, will plug into SMC's products via the available XAUI interface. The cPacket chip is capable of inspecting 100% of the header and data bits in 10 gigabit traffic, and monitoring, filtering, and providing alerts based on triggering events, at full wire speeds, under any traffic loads, and with no impact on network performance.
"The increased complexity of network traffic composed of voice, video and data is exacerbated with the high throughput of 10 gigabit networks,” stated Nick Lippis, a recognized authority on computer networking, and president of the Lippis Report. "The problems are more complex and spread much more quickly; thus there is a need for pervasive and simple visibility into the traffic going through the network.”
SMC switches equipped with the planned visibility module will enable network administrators to achieve this "pervasive visibility” – allowing them to pinpoint issues and take corrective actions proactively, all in real time. Bandwidth, packet rates, and protocol distributions will be visible on a second-by-second basis, through a simple Web interface. Additionally, users will be able to define triggers, and selective mirroring of specific subsets of traffic, permitting effective drill down and real time network troubleshooting.
Keith Alexis, vice president of sales at SMC Networks, said of the collaboration: "With the growing adoption of high-bandwidth, mission critical applications such as network virtualization, we are dedicated to advancing 10 gigabit networking in the SMB and enterprise environments. This new partnership with cPacket will enable SMC to provide real-time traffic visibility at an affordable price – a capability which has previously been attainable only in much higher-priced solutions.”
In regards to the market impact, Alexis added: "The capability to analyze network traffic at the granular level provides our reseller partners and customers with an incredible value proposition by giving them the tools to analyze traffic and proactively take steps to optimize network performance and minimize downtime.”
Rony Kay, president of cPacket, explained how such price performance is possible. "cPacket has developed a new class of chips that can inspect every bit in every packet on the fly, at 10 gigabits, and with no impact on performance. cPacket architecture enables easy integration of performance monitoring, application behavior analysis, selective drill down, and control features.”
The chips, which have been thoroughly field proven in reference design hardware, are claimed by Kay to offer about a 100:1 price-performance ratio over previous solutions found in high-end, mission critical hardware. "We achieve 10 times the processing power at one-tenth the cost”, he said.
SMC and cPacket are demonstrating the visibility module at the Supercomputing 2008 show in Austin Texas this week, at either the SMC booth, #1741 or the cPacket booth, #2043.
