Network Packet Brokers are dedicated appliances that elaborate and forward network traffic to monitoring and security tools. The packet broker filters, aggregates, load balance collected traffic information from network links and distributes it to its appropriate network monitoring tools. By having advanced filtering capabilities, an NPB can help provide better data performance, tighter security, and a faster way to determine the root cause of any issues by using advanced application intelligence.
In some cases, filtering and aggregating network traffic is not enough to efficiently use monitoring and security tools: Network Operators need NPBs capable to deliver advanced features like header stripping, packet slicing, inner parameters filtering and load balancing, on the same time assuring top performances.
Network Packet Brokers are fundamental pieces to build a Network Visibility System. They incorporate features like traffic aggregation, traffic replication, filtering, load-balancing, which are crucial to serve traffic to the monitoring tools.
Header Stripping and Packet Deduplication are also available in dedicated devices, to be used stand alone or as Network Intelligent Appliances for existing Network Visibility systems.