Endace offers 100 Gigabit Ethernet network monitoring system

Endace (LSE: EDA) has unveiled its EndaceAccess 100, a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) capable Network Visibility Headend. The system is designed to provide IT operations teams the network access necessary to monitor, analyze, protect, and troubleshoot 100GbE network segments.

“Until today, there has been no way for organizations to get visibility into 100G network segments, which has slowed 100G adoption,” said Spencer Greene, senior vice president, product management and marketing at Endace. “The EndaceAccess 100 enables organizations to leverage their existing 10-Gbps capable tools in a 100G environment. Previously, when the world moved from 1-Gbps to 10-Gbps networking, the ability to leverage existing tools in this way proved to be a major advantage for organizations, and we expect this to be the case as organizations make the natural transition from 10-Gbps to 40G and 100G networking.”

The EndaceAccess 100 is a 100GbE and 40GbE capable headend system that leverages Endace’s DAG technology, which the company asserts is “100 percent accurate.” The system can be configured to support LAN or WAN protocols. The fact that the system enables IT organizations to use existing 10-Gbps monitoring and security tools on 100GbE links helps ease the transition from 10 Gbps to 100GbE, the company says.

The need for such a tool is apparent, according to an industry analyst. “100G is growing in adoption, but remains the domain of large enterprises and carrier core networks; it will ultimately become approachable for smaller companies within data center deployments. As of today, there is no practical way for organizations seeking to deploy 100G to gain access to the network traffic for the purposes of network and/or network security monitoring,” said Jonah Kowall, research director at Gartner. “Additionally, the monitoring tools themselves cannot handle this level of traffic, which is a critical shortcoming that will prevent the deployment of 100G technology within many organizations."

The EndaceAccess 100 headend receives high-speed network traffic from passive optical taps and distributes the traffic to multiple lower-speed ports, which can then be connected to scale-out clusters of monitoring tools. The EndaceAccess 100 scales everything up by a factor of 10, receiving 100G or 40G inputs and distributing to multiple 10-Gbps destinations where the traffic can be analyzed.

The system provides support for two 100G or 40G monitoring ports that are configured to capture traffic from both sides of a bidirectional link, in two rack-units. Traffic from each monitoring port is distributed in a flow-safe way across 12 ports of 10 Gbps, enabling the system to scale to support full line-rate 100G. The load-balancing algorithm used in EndaceAccess 100 enables captured traffic to be directed to specific egress ports by flow and guarantees 100 percent accuracy at 100G, the company says.

The EndaceAccess 100 is designed to be interoperable with any 10-Gbps capable monitoring or security tool, including Endace’s own range of Intelligent Network Recorders. It is available immediately.

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