May 16th, 2007 |
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| Interop SpyNet Showcase May 2007 |
SpyNet Showcase is the first event in the history of Interop where state-of-the-art equipment from all major network analysis vendors are racked together in one vendor-neutral location (outside of the NOC) and receive identical copies of show traffic, allowing individual sponsors to demonstrate live performance of their monitoring products at their own booths.
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| The mission critical show network consists of redundant routers, firewalls and switches and a 10G optical ring that interconnects eight equipment racks (peds) distributed throughout the show floor. A number of passive optical taps are deployed throughout the network including 1G taps and 10G taps and the Data Access Switch is used to cross-connect (any-to-any), aggregate (many-to-any), multicast (any-to-many) and otherwise customize (packet filtering) the aggregrated traffic for each attached tool. |
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| To tap 1G links, the GigaTAP-SX modules which are integrated with Gigamon’s GigaVUE-MP Data Access Switch, are used to access date from the multiple 1G optical links. | To tap 10G link, the Network Critical 10G passive optical tap is used to access the 10G single mode fiber ring providing replica traffic to the 10G ports of the Gigamon switch. |
In addition, after the 10G optical ring is tapped and replica traffic is fed to the data access switch, multi-rule line-rate bit-mask filters are used to separate the bidirectional 10G traffic into multiple unidirectional 1G streams based on distinct IP subnets that correspond to the show floor peds (101, 102, etc.). This versatile 10G-to-1G Reverse Aggregator load-balancing scheme allows multiple 1G tools working in parallel to comprehensively monitor a 10G network.
In summary, the InteropSpyNet is a comprehensive monitoring network, allowing NOC engineers and SpyNet sponsors alike to access critical traffic both remotely and unobtrusively - before the firewalls, after the firewalls, to and from the command center (NOC) and its associate network management gears, and around the 10G ring.
With the SpyNet Showcase, we have created a level playing field, allowing any vendor to choose as much or as little traffic, and as broad or as focused as they wish to monitor, all for the purpose of showcasing the performance of their best-of-breed products in a hyper-demanding live environment.
Like the Olympic, SpyNet Showcase promotes cooperative competition and hopefully the ideals of sportsmanship. SpyNet Showcase is a welcoming arena, reminding some of us the beloved Spy vs Spy characters (those of us old enough to still remember rotary phones and paper comic books).
Denny K Miu
Gigamon Systems
Part 1: SpyNet Showcase
Part 2: Spy vs Spy
Part 3: SpyNet and Entrepreneur (J. Scott Haugdahl of WildPackets)
