When a major cable company came to us with a monitoring problem we gave them some great ideas. We know that the SmartNA-XL Hybrid TAP/Packet Broker is very flexible. Here is an example of exactly how flexible.
Our customer wanted to connect an encryptor to critical links. The encryptor must be installed inline, meaning that all traffic passed directly through the encryptor, gets encrypted and passes directly back into the network. The bypass module of the SmartNA-XL allows inline connection to links and typically bypasses the tool if any throughput problems are detected. However, this customer did not want the bypass feature activated because they did not want traffic to continue to pass into the network if the encryptor went off line for any reason.
The bypass module can be used for inline traffic and be configured to block traffic if the encryptor goes down. Therefore, the encryptor tool can be safely connected inline through the SmartNA-XL but no unencrypted traffic will pass through if the encryptor goes off line. The network link will go down but that is the choice the customer can make. Another option is to install redundant encryptors and use bypass to pass traffic through a secondary encryptor if the primary goes down. This allows high availability traffic to continue to pass, fully encrypted even if one of the encryptors goes down. The SmartNA-XL can automatically pass from the primary to the secondary encryptor if needed.
There are also ports left over for passive monitoring traffic in the same chassis. This single Hybrid TAP/Packet Broker can manage both inline security and out of band traffic monitoring through utilization of a variety of available modules. For more information go to www.networkcritical.com/products
