A long time ago in a data centre far, far away, packet analysers (or packet capture tools) were the default ‘go-to’ tool for network diagnostics. Packet analyser vendors made good money before being usurped by the ubiquitous rise of freeware offerings like Wireshark. But has the rise in network speeds and topologies rendered packet capture as a diagnostic technique to the annals of history?
Let’s look at a real life case study ….
You have a remote branch, say a dozen users or so, complaining of poor performance. Your existing network monitoring system may be showing good usage statistics on application mix, latency and throughput, but still the performance persists. What would be really great is if you could just drop a packet analyser on site to get a look at exactly what is going on.
No problem right?
Oh hang on, first you have to ship a packet analyser to site, then you need to configure a SPAN port or install a network tap (do I need a change request for this?). Of course you will need a network engineer to run the capture, hoping that we actually capture the issue before returning to assess what the issue is….
It’s no wonder packet capture has fallen out of favour!
What if we had a packet capture engine permanently installed in-line with a web based interface that we could initiate packet captures from where ever we are ..independent of where the remote site actually is. And better still what if that device was priced at a level where installing into every remote branch was still affordable?
That’s exactly what Byte25 delivers with the Byte25 Branch Appliance. A device specifically designed for remote branch monitoring complete with a web based packet capture engine (as well as a complete deep packet inspection and intrusion detection engine, but more on this in another post). The Byte25 Branch Appliance can be installed permanently in-line or connected to a switch SPAN/mirror port for complete visibility of ALL your packets when you really need visibility.