Network storms are imminent says cPacket

One of the most important trends in cloud security is the rapid development of pervasive network intelligence as the tool of choice for predicting potential attack vectors in advance, rather than the traditional approach to security of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

As Dr. Rony Kay, founder and CEO of pervasive network intelligence specialist, cPacket Networks, has observed, “traditional network monitoring tools identify problems only after the damage is done. Operations teams lack real-time information to quickly recognise tell-tale signs of problems like performance degradation, intermittent abnormalities, and applications misbehaviour.”

The objective of pervasive network intelligence solutions is to enable users to proactively pinpoint and mitigate imminent issues before they become costly disruptions.

cPacket cautions that datacentres and modern applications delivery networks are increasingly at risk. At the same time, the tools currently available do not allow the operational teams to detect imminent issues and correct them before they disrupt critical business activities. It also sees fundamental deficiencies in the outdated methods and current network monitoring tools, such as the use of legacy monitoring solutions that were not designed for the scale of the modern infrastructure. Many of these were architected decades ago to collect information after-the-fact.

It also sees legacy monitoring solutions providing only coarse average metrics instead of granular visibility into specific applications traffic at sub-sub milliseconds resolution of microbursts and spikes, as well as legacy solutions that are limited to local information about a few individual links, instead of providing global insight into the overall traffic behaviour across a complex multi-hop topology.

cPacket’s pervasive network intelligence solutions have been designed to address these issues. The company’s cVu monitoring devices are designed for the scale and speed of modern datacentre infrastructure. The heavy lifting of inspecting every bit in every packet and every flow, in real-time, is done `on-the-wire’ by cPacket’s Smart Ports, which are high-speed and cost-effective distributed sensors.

Key Performance Indicators are extracted at each Smart Port on-the-fly and are correlated centrally, allowing simple access from a unified dashboard. The KPIs include granular traffic behaviours - like microbursts, applications spikes, and intermittencies – enabling predictive analysis, proactive alerting and detailed reporting.

The company uses its own proprietary algorithmic chip to power the smart ports of all its products.