Network Instruments Announces New GigaTrunk™ Probe
Gigabit Trunking Solution Offers Full-Duplex, Wire-Speed Network Analysis for Up to Four Trunks at the Enterprise Core
Minneapolis, MN – February 23, 2004– Network Instruments, the industry leading developer of superior, user-friendly and affordable network management solutions, announces today the release of a new GigaTrunk Probe designed specifically for managing trunked gigabit links located at the core of the network. With the GigaTrunk Probe, IT professionals gain unparalleled monitoring performance, wire-speed capture and passive analysis with the ability to monitor up to four trunked links simultaneously. This full-duplex, hardware solution uses custom designed gigabit Ethernet cards coupled with the Network Instruments industry-leading packet capture buffer to guarantee the availability of business-critical applications and infrastructure.
Enterprise IT organizations utilize trunking to create multi-gigabit pipes, aggregating data through the core – the highest traffic area of the network. The aggregation improves response times by balancing network load and providing failover redundancy. The GigaTrunk Probe from Network Instruments offers the proactive maintenance required by IT administrators to ensure round-the-clock accessibility of gigabit trunked links.
“Enterprise networks require powerful visibility and insight into the core of their operations,” said Douglas Smith, president of Network Instruments. “The new GigaTrunk Probe from Network Instruments provides today’s IT professional with problem resolution capabilities to troubleshoot individual trunked links as well as the ability to monitor load-balanced trunks for greater efficiency. Our GigaTrunk Probe offers an economically viable way of managing these critical gigabit links for guaranteed uptime and availability – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”
The GigaTrunk Probe is designed to passively capture data without interfering with the network. By collecting data in real-time at the trunk level, conversations can be viewed in aggregate across trunks or packet-by-packet for detailed investigations. The GigaTrunk Probe includes the industry-leading 4GB packet capture buffer for the ability to capture and review 40 times more troubleshooting data than that of competitive offerings.
“Our GigaTrunk Probe outperforms rival products in the market,” said Andriy Oliinyk, vice president of engineering at Network Instruments. “It has a larger memory buffer, more RAM, a bigger hard-drive and can capture at line-rate without disrupting the network. By connecting into the main arteries of a network through the installation of a TAP (Test Access Point) we’ve ensured a completely passive option which allows for greater efficiency than using a SPAN port on a switch.”
The GigaTrunk Probe reports back to the award-winning Expert Observer® or Observer Suite console. Using the console and the GigaTrunk Probe, network administrators can perform Packet Capture and Decode, obtain Real-Time Statistics, perform Expert Analysis and utilize Network Trending and Reporting with nanosecond resolution for high-capacity networks.
The GigaTrunk Probe supports up to four-gigabit links, carrying up to eight Gbps of traffic. To support these rates, the GigaTrunk Probe uses specially designed 64-bit, 66 MHz gigabit Ethernet cards giving the probe a way to guarantee data rate capture and analysis.
“In order to facilitate capturing at these extremely high line rates, groups of 64-bit, 66 MHz cards are the only solution that eliminates the fear of dropped packets,” said Oliinyk. “Each 64 bit, 66 MHz NIC (Network Interface Card) can handle over four Gbps, where as a standard 32-bit card can handle roughly one Gbps worth of data. Full-duplex gigabit has made the use of 32-bit cards for analysis obsolete.”
The GigaTrunk Probe is competitively priced in three formats: two-trunked links for $25K, three-trunked links for $29K or four-trunked links for $33K. All prices are inclusive of software, hardware and any necessary TAPs that may be required for passive analysis. The hardware appliance adheres to the industry 4U form factor for easy installation into any existing rack system. GigaTrunk Probes are available and ready-to-ship. More information can be found on the company’s Web site at www.networkinstruments.com.
About Network Instruments
Network Instruments is the industry leading developer of superior, user-friendly, and affordable network management, analysis and troubleshooting solutions. The award-winning Observer family of products combines a comprehensive management and analysis console with high-performance remote Probes to provide integrated monitoring and management for the entire network (LAN, 802.11 a/b/g, Gigabit,WAN). All Network Instruments products are designed utilizing our Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA) architecture. With NI-DNA, the Observer solution set simplifies network troubleshooting and management, optimizes network and application performance and scales to meet the needs of any organization. Founded in 1994, Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with offices in London, Paris, throughout the USA and distributors in 50 countries. More information about the company, products, innovation, technology, NI-DNA, becoming a partner and NI University can be found at www.networkinstruments.com.
