IOTA and Booster aggregation TAPs

Small branch offices often lack the IT resources of larger locations. Network engineers need cost-effective and reliable ways to monitor small-scale network traffic, preferably with remote capabilities.

This is made possible by combining Profitap's Booster aggregation TAPs, for lossless network traffic aggregation, with Profitap IOTA, for capturing and analyzing this data.

Note on capture performance: With two Boosters in place operating at line rate, the combined output forwarded to the IOTA can go up to 16 Gbps. To handle this amount of traffic, IOTA 10G models can process traffic at 20 Gbps / 32 Mpps, providing line rate hardware filtering, slicing, and timestamping. IOTA 10G can capture traffic to disk at a rate of 3.2 Gbps / 5 Mpps.

Figure 1: 8x in-line full-duplex connections forwarded over 2x10G outputs to IOTA 10G+ rackmount model.

Benefits:

• Real-time network overview and statistics
• Up to 2 Boosters and 1 IOTA in a 1U rackmount chassis
• Direct link aggregation, no management, installation, or driver required
• Non-intrusive to the network
• VLAN tagging of aggregated links
• Redundant powering
• Dedicated probe and analysis capabilities
• Remote access and management of IOTA
• In-line and out-of-band modes
• 1 TB or 2 TB swappable SSD

When using a 1 Gbps aggregation TAP with a 1 Gbps aggregated output link, the total bandwidth can be as large as 2 Gbps per in-line link, overburdening the TAP and leading to dropped packets.

The Booster In-Line Gigabit Copper Aggregation TAP aggregates 4 x 10/100/1G in-line links to one 1/10G output port, providing fail-safe, lossless traffic aggregation and speed conversion in a single compact device.

Figure 2: Lossless traffic aggregation (left) and speed conversion (right) scenarios.

Additionally, the Booster supports ingress VLAN tagging and link failure propagation (LFP)—a feature that transmits link failure errors between ports, allowing the network to activate a redundant path, while the TAP stays available for auto-negotiation. The integrated Data Diode feature protects the network from any data injection from the monitor port.

The IOTA 10G+ is a multifunctional passive network probe with integrated traffic capture and analysis capabilities. High performance and reliability make it a great asset for getting access and visibility into enterprise-level networks. Profitap IOTA can be used as a dedicated probe, or programmed for autonomous onsite analysis, eliminating the need for an onsite network expert.

Out of the box, IOTA comes with integrated software to help analyze the captured data in real-time. By extracting metadata from the captured files, IOTA is able to quickly give you a visual overview of what is happening on your network. The raw packet data is conserved for later analysis, if necessary.

IOTA dashboards help you filter large amounts of network traffic instantly, significantly optimizing your workflow and reducing time spent on troubleshooting.

Figure 3: Application Overview dashboard displayed on a laptop.