White Paper I Load Balancing

Net Optics Load Balancing Solutions: A Brief Guide to Understanding Your Options
Accelerate Your Monitoring, Security and Compliance Performance with Load Balancing Solutions from Net Optics
Are you getting the best performance from your monitoring and security toolsor is oversubscription causing them to drop packets and miss messages? Todays skyrocketing traffic and high-speed 10 Gbps links put severe pressure on vital tools like performance analyzers and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs) that inspect traffic to block data leaks and malware. Load balancing not only prevents oversubscription, it also helps you gain the best value from your 1G tool investment by leveraging them on 10G links. Performance of security tools such as IPSs, Database Activity Monitors (DAMs), and Data Loss Prevention devices (DLPs) depends upon the complexity of the security rule base. A security device with a long, complicated rule base does not perform at as high a level as one with a limited policy. In other words, there is a tradeoff between security and performance. Dynamic Load Balancing, engineered for 10G line speeds, actively monitors load levels on output channels and adjusts traffic distribution in real time to keep loads even. These Net Optics products deliver load balancing: Director is ideal for passive monitoring, such as that of telecoms needing to balance RTP traffic or decode RTP headers for call center applications with traffic going out to VoIP recorders. Static load balancing is well suited to the RTP traffic. Director Pro performs dynamic inline load balancing for IPSs with link-state awareness. That means If a tool in the load balance set fails, the solution redistributes traffic to the remaining tools until the failed tool is repaired or replaced and the link comes back up. Director Pro also provides Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) functionality, enabling fine-grained selection of traffic to be load balanced.

Load Balancing Is the AnswerBut Whats Your Ideal Load-Balancing Approach?

With Load Balancing, one size doesnt fit all, so its vital to choose the right solution. Depending on traffic type, Net Optics offers an unrivaled spectrum of options for getting the most from your network tools. Load balancing can distribute 10G traffic to multiple 1G tools, plus aggregate traffic from multiple1G and 10G links and distribute it to share the load. Flows to be kept intact can be identified by IP address pairs, by IP source address only, by IP destination address only, or by other packet header fields. Non-flow-based traffic can be load balanced using a packet-by-packet round-robin algorithm. Static Load Balancing splits traffic to let multiple tools work on different parts of it. For example, when 10G traffic exceeds 1G tool capacity, you can filter and send packets with odd IP source addresses to one 1G tool and even addresses to anotheror use other differentiators.

For Static Load Balancing Out to 10G Tools, Choose the xStream Platform
Director xStream splits traffic into multiple streams so data can be processed by two or more tools working in parallel appropriate for government and service provider forensics and compliance needs. Director xStream takes traffic from any network port or aggregated set of network ports and distributes it to two, three, four, or any number of available monitor ports, balancing loads by IP address, port, protocol, VLAN, MAC addressor any other packet header field. The devices ultra-low latency ensures minimal delays that can degrade the accuracy of timing analysis. Director xStream Pros dynamic load balancing is complemented with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and filtering capabilities, among many other functions. To balance loads, data is processed by 2 to 16 tools working in parallel and supporting four independent dynamic load balancing groups. This is suited to out-of-band load balancing for forensic traffic recorders and performance analyzers with

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White Paper I Load Balancing

xBalancer is Net Optics new purpose-built load balancing data to be processed by 2 to 16 tools working in parallel, monitoring tools working in parallel. While it supports out-of-band timing analysis, while per-second network analytics enable detection of microburst congestion in real time. DPI allows inspection of every bit of every packetpayloads as well as headersat full 10 Gbps line rate. industry. In addition, a breakthrough tool-sharing topology lets several independent links share a pool of inline tools. inline monitoring for IPSs and other inline tools. It also supports

Solution Director Director Pro

Static

Dynamic

Backplane

Max Output interfaces

DPI as selection criteria

Out-ofband

Inline

Expandable

Link- state aware

Tool sharing

Heartbeat

X X X

34G, 54G, 74G 34G, 64G

34 x 1G Static: 34 x 1G Dynamic: 16 x 1G 23 x 10G 16 x 10G 23 x 10G X X

X X X

X X X

Director xStream Director xStream Pro xBalancer

X X X X

240G 240G 240G

X X X X X X X

Need more information? Contact Net Optics and get the right load balancing solution for your tra c.
Net Optics, Inc. 5303 Betsy Ross Drive Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408) 737-7777 info@netoptics.com www.netoptics.com

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Network Performance Channel GmbH Ohmstr. 12 63225 Langen Germany +49 6103 906 722 info@np-channel.com www.np-channel.com

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