Net Optics Blog

Musing on Lawful Interception

Sharon Besser — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:17:31 +0000

Musing on Lawful Interception Posted By: Sharon Besser Mon, 2013-05-20 00:17 Lawful Interception or LI is short is a key tool for any government to maintain public order and security. In the past I wrote a lot about LI (even stared in a movie and mentioned by Wikileaks article) but times are changing so there's a need to provide an update..... LI is obtaining communications network data pursuant to lawful authority for the purpose of analysis or evidence. I do not...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

7 Million Network Connections from Interop - What Network Performance Monitoring Reveals About Attendees (part 2)

Dave Britt — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:51:13 +0000

7 Million Network Connections from Interop - What Network Performance Monitoring Reveals About Attendees (part 2) Posted By: Dave Britt Thu, 2013-05-09 12:51 This is Part 2 of 2 of my recent Blog Post regarding Interop Las Vegas 2012, where Net Optics was invited to deploy our Application-Aware Network Performance Monitoring appliance, Spyke, into the Interop NOC. We found that via Spyke collecting the data and making it meaningful we were able to identify the user behavior on this unique...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Welcome! xStream 40

Sharon Besser — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:57:30 +0000

Welcome! xStream 40 Posted By: Sharon Besser Tue, 2013-05-07 05:57 If you have missed the news , we are very proud today to announce a new xStream platform. This is our new platform for 40G networks. It provides many enhancements over the existing platform. New iLinkAgg xStream 40, Director xStream 40 and xBalancer 40 products will be added to our portfolio. The solutions are being demonstrated with live traffic with partner’s integration at Interop. See press...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

7 Million Network Connections from Interop - What Network Performance Monitoring Reveals About Attendees (part 1)

Dave Britt — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:24:37 +0000

7 Million Network Connections from Interop - What Network Performance Monitoring Reveals About Attendees (part 1) Posted By: Dave Britt Mon, 2013-04-29 21:24 Being given the opportunity and honor to monitor the Interop Las Vegas network last May (2012) filled this software engineer with excitement. All that data, all those graphs that were generated… oh my! In this 2-part post I'll be reviewing what the network traffic can teach us about how attendees utilized the network....

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Happy Birthday Dear Ethernet

Sharon Besser — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:10:19 +0000

Happy Birthday Dear Ethernet Posted By: Sharon Besser Mon, 2013-04-29 06:10 Next month my team and I will be presenting at multiple events around the world. During the preparation and creation of new content I was looking for some fun facts about the Ethernet protocol which will be celebrating 40 years soon(almost as old as myself, much more popular and useful :-) According to Wiki, Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974.It was inspired by ALOHAnet, which...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Ethernet Summit - A look into the future of networking

Amir Kossover — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:00:07 +0000

Ethernet Summit - A look into the future of networking Posted By: Amir Kossover Mon, 2013-04-22 09:00 Ethernet Summit - A look into the future of networking Last week I was a speaker at the Ethernet Summit. This convention packs a lot of people who set the path for the network industry. In the same track I delivered a presentation, they were talking about 400Gb network, delivering 100Gb on twisted pairs and ways of testing these high speed network technologies. All the presentations...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Director and Director Pro V 7.5

Sharon Besser — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:46:50 +0000

Director and Director Pro V 7.5 Posted By: Sharon Besser Sun, 2013-04-21 11:46 Director and Director Pro version 7.5 is now available! This release includes many enhancements and several fixes to issues discovered in the field. Some of this release highlights: Enhanced counters and additional statistics screens: New counters for different frame sizes on Rx and Tx, collisions, CRC errors, oversize packets, etc. Copy_drop filter command: A new a filter option to be used with copy...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

SDN: Keep Calm and Carry On

Sharon Besser — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:24:19 +0000

SDN: Keep Calm and Carry On Posted By: Sharon Besser Sun, 2013-04-21 11:24 Since I wrote about SDN late last year and our announcement and demonstration at the RSA conference In February 2013, interest about SDN has increased. Yet, is not always clear what all the hype is about and what will inevitably be the role of networks as we know them today. Different protocols and technical terms are being used to describe a function and a use case. Software Defined Networks as a concept are...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

The Daily Tip: Decimal to Hex Conversion Tool

Sharon Besser — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:09:51 +0000

The Daily Tip: Decimal to Hex Conversion Tool Posted By: Sharon Besser Thu, 2013-04-18 00:09 Many times I found myself trying to figure out how to convert decimal to hexadecimal values in order to decode packet captures or create User Defined Filters (UDF) for special use cases. A very simple to use UI-based tool of xStream products (Director xStream, xBalancer, iLinkAgg xStream) provides such functionality exactly. Enjoy ! -- Sharon

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Tech Note: iBypass Heartbeat Customization for Improved IPS Integration

Yossi Attia — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:02:18 +0000

Tech Note: iBypass Heartbeat Customization for Improved IPS Integration Posted By: Yossi Attia Mon, 2013-04-08 10:02 Overview Net Optics iBypass is a bypass switch available for in-line network security appliances, such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS), Web application optimization devices, and firewalls. The Heartbeat feature allows the iBypass and the IPS to share state information, protecting against link, application, and power failures on an attached IPS device. A configurable...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

DSCP and TOS

Sharon Besser — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:06:22 +0000

DSCP and TOS Posted By: Sharon Besser Wed, 2013-03-13 07:06 Searching for a simple method to convert DSCP and TOS values, I came accross this web page, created by D Tucny. The page also provide useful TCPDUMP examples. Great resource for filtering... Thanks! The following table shows common decimal, hex and binary values for TOS, broken down into the meaning of the parts of that byte including DSCP values when interpretting that byte as DSCP. -- Sharon

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Go With, Feel Without

Amir Kossover — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:01:58 +0000

Go With, Feel Without Posted By: Amir Kossover Tue, 2013-03-12 09:01 When deploying security products on your network, it is always a subtle game of price versus performance. Security products, be it an IPS, DDOS prevention, firewalls or any kind of threat protection device, add latency into the network. It’s a performance intensive task to do all these sophisticated deep packet inspection and heuristics. If you wish to maximize the throughput your network infrastructure is capable of,...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

TAPs for improved Security Intelligence and Analytics (SIA) Operations

Sharon Besser — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:43:04 +0000

TAPs for improved Security Intelligence and Analytics (SIA) Operations Posted By: Sharon Besser Sun, 2013-02-10 03:43 One of the challenges of our industry is to explain how can one gain access to the network in order to perform security, compliance and monitoring operations. Most IT professionals are aware of SPAN and monitor ports, however they do not know that there are better options to acquire network streams than SPAN. In fact, I believe that most IT professionals are not...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Musing On Network Congestion - Part 3

Sharon Besser — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:52:55 +0000

Musing On Network Congestion - Part 3 Posted By: Sharon Besser Sun, 2013-02-03 07:52 This is the last post in a series of 3, dedicated to different types of congestion drops. Previously I wrote about Aggregation-Based Congestion Drops. and Load-Balancing Congestion Drops. This post will discuss Burst-Related Congestion Drops. Traffic burst is a phenomenon that occurs when network traffic that is higher than normal is sent over a short period of time. In the context of...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Only Inspecting the Bad Fruit - Optimized Packet Analysis

Dave Britt — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:31:01 +0000

Only Inspecting the Bad Fruit - Optimized Packet Analysis Posted By: Dave Britt Fri, 2013-02-01 10:31 Some of the more erudite amongst you may remember (fondly one would hope) our two erstwhile heroes Achilles and the Tortoise pondering the problems of inspecting apples in the orchard to isolate the bad ones prior to going to market. Rather than revisit this idea, I thought it perhaps more worthwhile to take a more tangible approach in discussing the real world issues with identifying...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

5 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Virtualization

Ravit Greitser — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 20:09:11 +0000

5 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Virtualization Posted By: Ravit Greitser Mon, 2013-01-28 13:09 One of the areas of network visibility that Net Optics has pioneered is Visibility for Virtualized environments. With the Introduction of the first and only Phantom Virtualization Tap, we provide complete visibility of all traffic running on any virtual machine anywhere. Virtualization may seem just the buzzword du jour but for the bloggers below, it has been an integral part of their IT...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Recap: Citrix Synergy Barcelona 2012

David Pham — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:35:00 +0000

Recap: Citrix Synergy Barcelona 2012 Posted By: David Pham Thu, 2012-10-18 16:35 Our EMEA virtualization tour started last week with VMworld and now comes to a close at Citrix Synergy. 2011 to 2012 saw heavily influences on building infrastructure with the private/public cloud with server virtualization but as we are now transitioning from 2012 to 2013, we are beginning to evolve onto SDN’s (software-defined networks) and the BYOD/mobile revolution. This was evident as...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Impressions from VMworld Europe

Ran Nahmias — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:29:54 +0000

Impressions from VMworld Europe Posted By: Ran Nahmias Sun, 2012-10-14 23:29 As we entered the third and last day of VMworld Europe in Barcelone, I noticed that the European event—always different and significantly smaller than its U.S. counterpart—seemed larger than in recent years. The crowd was also noticeably vibrant. I can’t call to mind immediately what I wrote after VMworld US, and I hope I am not repeating myself. If I am, it’s simply because I am...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Recap: VMworld San Francisco 2012

David Pham — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:34:26 +0000

Recap: VMworld San Francisco 2012 Posted By: David Pham Thu, 2012-08-30 13:34 Another year, another successful VMworld in the records. The event we waited for all year started on a Sunday and we were amazed to see so many people from all over the world sacrifice their weekend to attend one of the most anticipated conferences – I just want to clarify, it was a beautiful 80 degrees in sunny San Francisco. It was VERY tough for anyone one to give up the warm weather and stand...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

First day at Microsoft Tech Ed 2012

Ran Nahmias — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 03:58:12 +0000

First day at Microsoft Tech Ed 2012 Posted By: Ran Nahmias Mon, 2012-06-11 20:58 First Day at Microsoft Tech Ed 2012 There are 12,000 people here at Tech-Ed 2012 in Orlando. It is sometimes easy to forget that Microsoft’s biggest annual even draws so many attendees and that the learning boot camp type event is very popular among those who are being referred to as “softies” (nothing to do with consistency ). The event this year is all about Windows 8. Windows...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Phantom Virtualization Taps - the family is growing!

Ran Nahmias — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:51:08 +0000

Phantom Virtualization Taps - the family is growing! Posted By: Ran Nahmias Wed, 2012-05-09 17:51 This is the first time in many years of attendance that I am leaving InterOp after the second day. This is also one of the most exciting InterOp shows I can recall. Well, maybe the 9/11 InterOp in Atlanta was more exciting but not in a good way. Earlier in the week, at the opening of InterOp West 2012 we announced our expansion of the Phantom Virtualization Tap Solutions. Last year, @ RSA in...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Virtually Invisible: Meeting Lawful Intercept Challenges in Virtual Environments, Part Two

Ran Nahmias — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:42:38 +0000

Virtually Invisible: Meeting Lawful Intercept Challenges in Virtual Environments, Part Two Posted By: Ran Nahmias Mon, 2012-01-30 11:42 Posted on CTR-Computer Technology Review By Ran Nahmias This article is the second in a two-part series introducing the virtual Tap and exploring how it can cost-efficiently meet many of the needs of Lawful Interception. The first part addressed the challenges associated with Lawful Interception (LI) and compliance inherent to virtualization within...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Don't miss out on Sharon Besser's talk today (Wed., 07/13/11) at 3:30.

christopher@netoptics.com — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:22:22 +0000

Don't miss out on Sharon Besser's talk today (Wed., 07/13/11) at 3:30. Posted By: christopher@netoptics.com Wed, 2011-07-13 11:22 Top Five Ways to Enhance Your Cisco Environment - The Secrets You Need to Know Net Optics, Booth 1841: Wed., July 13 - 3:30pm Sharon Besser, VP of Technology Cisco’s virtual data center portfolio of products has grown rapidly and is leading the market with offerings such as the Nexus 1000V and the VN-Link architecture solutions....

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Make sure to join the fun at the Net Optics booth where we are going Gaga for Gigabits.

christopher@netoptics.com — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:37:31 +0000

Make sure to join the fun at the Net Optics booth where we are going Gaga for Gigabits. Posted By: christopher@netoptics.com Tue, 2011-07-12 14:37 Make sure to join the fun at the Net Optics booth where we are going Gaga for Gigabits. This is your chance to take home an awesome souvenir...a flip book to show off your Vegas encounter with Lady Gaga. Fans are getting the chance to pose with the pop icon...or, rather, a "phantom" version of the pop queen. And speaking of...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.

Cisco’s MACSec + Net Optics’ Director xStream Pro = Peace of Mind

christopher@netoptics.com — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:08:28 +0000

Cisco’s MACSec + Net Optics’ Director xStream Pro = Peace of Mind Posted By: christopher@netoptics.com Mon, 2011-07-11 14:08 Net Optics is excited that Cisco has selected our Director xStream Pro as the first and only network monitoring solution to provide visibility into the MACsec LAN encryption solution in switches across their demo network at Cisco Live this week. Cisco will be promoting MACSec, their new security encryption method, at the show and has chosen the Net...

Visit http://www.netoptics.com/blog to read more.