Visibility and Security with sFlow

Brocade networking products are designed to deliver line-rate Layer 2-3 forwarding, and provide traffic flow information through embedded sFlow technology. This enables real-time delivery of network traffic to a variety of security, reporting, and compliance devices. This includes IPS along with traffic accounting appliances and applications. With sFlow, Brocade provides network monitoring capabilities to sFlow collectors, complementing the protection services available via IPS solutions from Brocade security partners such as McAfee and CheckPoint.

Complete network management has always been a goal for network managers in organizations of all sizes. Trying to understand all the possible traffic flows, the bandwidth requirements, performance implications, security threats, and billing allocations are just a few of the challenges of modern networks. As networks grow in size, speed, and capacity, it becomes much more difficult to monitor and manage with traditional tools that rely on RMON or NetFlow-based counters and statistics.

sFlow is a modern standard-based network export protocol (RFC 3176) that addresses many of the challenges that organizations face today. By embedding sFlow technology into its LAN switch ASICs, Brocade delivers "always-on" technology that operates at wire-speed performance. Cost of implementation is significantly lower compared to traditional network monitoring solutions that use mirrored ports, probes, and line tap technologies. A full enterprise-wide monitoring capability for every port in the corporate network is now possible using sFlow.

Advantages of Brocade sFlow implementation include:

• Is ASIC-based for fast, low-overhead monitoring
• Reduces the need to use port mirroring and to provision probes throughout the network (this reduces cost and complexity while maintaining high performance)
• Supports a broad range of protocols (IPv4, IPv6, and MPLS)
• Is easily integrated with a broad range of network management and partner threat protection technologies
• Works with InMon Traffic Server to provide continuous monitoring and analysis of network traffic.  For more information on the InMon Traffic Sentinel, visit http://www.inmon.com/

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