Executive Overview
Imagine a world where you can use your 1G tools to monitor a 10G network. It can be done due to two important enablers:
First, most tools only need to see a small fraction of the network traffic to do their jobs. In fact, sending more data than is required actually degrades efficiency, because tools cannot keep up.
Second, Monitoring Optimization, using a Network Monitoring Switch, enables traffic to be filtered and dynamically directed to the correct tools. With this technique, you can increase monitoring coverage and save money. Monitoring Optimization enables traffic to be received at 10G bandwidths and filtered on Layer 2/3/4 criteria.
In most cases, traffic from a 10G link can be reduced to 1G or less by filtering out data that a tool does not need to see, so your existing 1G tools can still be used. If the filtered traffic is over 1G, then operators can still use their 1G tools by load balancing the traffic to two 1G tools using the Network Monitoring Switch. With proper filtering, multiple 10G links can be monitored with a single 1G tool.
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