TMCnews Featured Article

Gigamon Earns Three New Patents for Access Switching Technology

By Divya Narain, TMCnet Contributor

California-based Gigamon has expanded its Intellectual Property Portfolio by winning three new patents for its innovative data access switching technology. The U.S. Patents No. 7,424,018, 7,436,832, and 7,440,467 will ensure the protection of Gigamon’s (News - Alert) core Data Access Network (DAN) technology.

Gigamon's DAN technology powers the company’s GigaVUE line of data access switches. These switches have been deployed by over 400 telecom, industrial, manufacturing, financial, research, medical, retail, utility and government networks in 36 countries.

GigaVUE switches have a three-tier user access control configuration which allows administrators to restrict access to only include the data streams needed for a particular device. A GigaVUE switch provides the right amount of data to a monitoring device at a specific rate, thus optimizing the performance of the tool and streamlining capital cost of monitoring infrastructure.

In addition, GigaVUE switches do not affect network operations thanks to their out-of-band orientation.

Patrick Leong, Gigamon's chief technical officer, said, "Gigamon's DAN approach, as made available through its GigaVUE family of data access switches, has reshaped the way companies monitor their networks for everything from troubleshooting to lawful intercept. We're pleased that our innovative approach has been recognized with the issuance of U.S. patents."

Gigamon switches can intelligently breakdown large loads across different tools. This ensures that both 10 GigE and legacy 1 GigE tools can be employed simultaneously.

"With the proliferation of tools for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, intrusion detection, forensic recording, VoIP analysis and the like, TAP or SPAN ports can be overwhelmed," explained Leong. "The result is that engineers often have to fight for access to network traffic. DAN technology avoids this issue by aggregating, replicating and filtering network traffic to any number of different GigE or 10 GigE monitoring tools."

Founded in 2003, Gigamon is a provider of intelligent data access networking products.

TMCnet recently reported that Gigamon had introduced GigaVUE 2404 high-density data access switch, a monitoring infrastructure solution for ultra-fast 10GigE networks.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Fixed Service Strategies for Mobile Network Operators, brought to you by Comverse (News - Alert).

Divya Narain is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Divya’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Michelle Robart