TMCnet Network Packet Broker Week in Review

By Jamie Epstein, TMCnet Web Editor

If your business wishes to see the maximum amount of flexibility, in addition to the lowest latency, possible, now is definitely the time to invest in a network packet broker (NPB). NPBs provides features such as aggregation, replication and regeneration, enabling companies to gain access to real-time data that will allow them to see exactly what the patterns of traffic are doing within their network.

This week in the rapidly growing space, it was revealed that as network complexity is heightened within a virtualized network, packet loss tends to increase.

According to TMCnet Contributing Writer Rory Lidstone, “Even well-designed virtual machine (VM) networking will encounter high packet loss, which will affect network performance adversely. Specifically, a network losing a high number of packets with regularity will suffer from higher latency and overall slower network performance, making high-bandwidth tasks, such as transferring large amounts of data like pulling teeth as data is lost and must be resent. This, in turn, leads to wasted time, network resources and money.”

So, how do you combat packet loss? Implementing a network packet broker can help to significantly reduce the chances of your network going down due to the fact that it improves network security and performance tools already in place within the corporate infrastructure.

In other news, provider of networking solutions Brocade (News - Alert) revealed that its newly released Brocade VCS fabric plug-in is capable of providing powerful on-demand fabric provisioning capabilities in OpenStack-based cloud environments. Further, the offering provides a much deeper level of visibility into every action taking place within the network, outlining small problems before they become major issues.

John Igoe, vice president of Rackspace (News - Alert) Private Cloud commented, “The benefit of deploying a private or public cloud built on OpenStack is that it gives the customer the utmost level of flexibility and control when provisioning essential components within an open cloud architecture. The inclusion of Brocade as a part of the Rackspace Private Cloud reference architecture addresses the desire of our customers to have choice in their distributions. Innovative companies like Brocade, who are committed to supporting open initiatives, enable customers to fully capitalize on their IT investments without risk of vendor or technology lock-in associated with proprietary platforms.”

The product also helps organizations migrate to virtualized environments with ease and enhances the agility of IT administrators.

Closing out the week, SOA Software has ramped up its support for REST services, through its newly released Policy Manager for IBM (News - Alert) WebSphere DataPower. Not only does the company work closely with its expanding client base to cost effectively manage and maintain their network, but it also assists them in areas such as modeling, securing, monitoring, clustering and automating REST services without any associated complexity.

Alistair Farquharson, chief technology officer at SOA Software, concluded, “For companies who need to extend the reach of their enterprise data to mobile users and Web 2.0 applications, this new REST capability is essential. Our enablement of the DataPower appliance has resulted in large gains for customers inside the enterprise.”

There you have it – this week in network packet broker news. Be sure to stay tuned to the Network Packet Broker Community exclusively on TMCnet for all of the most up-to-date information from this growing vertical!

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