We cover 10 Gig network analysis fairly regularly, which is why I was excited to see an article today by Peter Williams, a senior analyst with Bloor Research, a major UK IT analyst firm. In the article, Williams sheds light on the seldom but important topic of real-time analyzers handling increasing network speeds. In a short time, Ethernet networks have quickly jumped from 10Mb/sec to 100Mb to 1GB to 10Gb, but are real time analyzers keeping pace.
The implication of increased network speeds on the analyzer that Williams outlines are important: 1) software-only analyzers are no longer an option 2) the amount of information analyzed could increase 10-fold leaving the engineer swamped in analysis and making it more difficult to identify the cause of performance problems.
So given these challenges, what analysis tools should an organization consider for real-time 10 Gb analysis:
The market-leading protocol analyser is called Sniffer (nowadays owned by Netscout after its recent purchase of Network General). Yet, even in its hardware-software appliance format, Sniffer cannot yet cope with 10Gb Ethernet in real-time. The product nearest to achieving this at present is from Network Instruments. To do this, its Observer software is supported by a dedicated capture card designed from scratch for throughput and its GigaStor disk technology that incorporates daisy-chained SATA RAID arrays to which the data is written in parallel to keep up with storing the data at the speed received.
Another key development is that of retrospective network analysis. With 10 Gb links being used for mission-critical applications, when a problem does occur time is of the essence. With retrospective network analysis devices storing terabytes of network connections and packet-level information, their in-depth investigation and quick problem resolution capabilities make them an important tool for any network staff.
The article is a great read, and I have included other 10 Gig resources below:
10 Gb Network Analysis Considerations
10 Gigabit Analysis Technology
10 GbE Terminology
Ethernet vs. Infiniband
March 28, 2008 at 9:10 pm |
[...] you have a 10gb network, you may want to check out this post by Network Observations which highlights a report on real-time analyzers handling increasing network speeds. According to [...]