The most important thing you could add to your network...

Niagara's Network Packet Brokers (NPB) provide network data access to NetOps and SecOps for real-time threat detection, investigation, and response. Our NPB solutions are strengthened by a robust Technology Alliance Program with top-tier technology leaders and deployed in the most prestigious networks worldwide.

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What Exactly Does a Network Packet Broker Do

Niagara’s NPB advanced  solutions perform a range of crucial functionalities for all types of networks, even those with extremely complex architectures and that are resource-intensive including:

  • Complete Network Visibility - Unveiling the presence of familiar, suspicious, and enigmatic traffic traversing through both physical and virtual networks.
  • Network robustness - Guaranteeing the prevention of data loss and implementing advanced filtering techniques, along with providing high availability, stripping, and other specialized packet capabilities. This includes intricate Regular Expression (REGEX) filtering and headers stripping for filtered traffic, which can be processed and analyzed by inspection tools.
  • Network management goes beyond just monitoring network traffic. It entails understanding the intricacies of each type of traffic and knowing exactly how to handle them. This includes efficiently routing authorized data types and effectively dealing with suspicious and unknown traffic. By simplifying APM and NPM analytics and reporting, network management becomes seamless and streamlined.
  • Enhanced network security - streamline the analysis of security and detect advanced threats while ensuring effective prevention.

The Importance of Having a Network Packet Broker

As data analyzers, Niagara's Packet Brokers also excel in eliminating redundant packets, known as deduplication, before they reach analysis or security tools within the network. This is particularly beneficial when multiple TAPs or SPAN ports forward their data traffic, as the NPBs efficiently remove these duplicates. By doing so, they ensure that network tools can focus on valuable data, saving resources and optimizing performance.

The basic schema for manipulating data packets includes a variety of configurations. These include one network link connected to one tool (one-to-one), one network link connected to multiple tools (one-to-many), multiple network links connected to one tool (many-to-one), and multiple network links connected to multiple tools (many-to-many). These configurations are seamlessly integrated and load balanced throughout the entire network, creating a cohesive and efficient system.
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The Broad Family of Network Packet Brokers that Sets the Standard for (NetOps and SecOps) Agility

With a wide array of Network Packet Brokers tailored to various use cases and application scenarios, Niagara Networks empowers NetSecOps by offering five major advantages:

 

1. Resolves complex network architecture and establishes a seamless flow of network traffic to enhance the performance of monitoring and
     security tools.

2. Ultra-high granular view of packet flows from any TAP use case including Niagara's CloudRay virtual TAP and Cloud Intelligence Platform 
     solution.

 

3. Simplify Application and Network Performance (APM / NPM) analytics and reporting. 

 

4. Enhance your security analytics with streamlined efficiency, advanced threat inspection, and prevention capabilities.

 

5. Boost tool performance and scalability - maximize traffic capacity while minimizing redundant and irrelevant headers and payload.




                             Empower NetOps and SecOps with The Right Traffic to The Right Tool - Across ANY Network...

 

NPB Any Network

 

As part of the advanced packet broker offering powered by the Packetron acceleration module, Niagara Networks' unique Open Visibility solution can host any third-party virtual tools on a single appliance, leveraging hardware-accelerated traffic processing for enhanced performance. This includes advanced IPv4 and IPv6 packet parsing and manipulation from OSI Layer 2 up to Layer 7, with functions such as header and payload slicing, data masking, application filtering, NetFlow/IPFIX metadata generation, tunnel termination (ERSPAN, GRE, NVGRE, VXLAN, GENEVE, etc.), selective TLS decryption, mobile visibility, deduplication, packet replication, and regular expression filtering to support sophisticated packet conditioning use cases.

Advanced Packet Brokers' Product Matrix

NPB-2025

 

Packet Brokers for any Use Case

Niagara offers 3 types of Network Packet Brokers:

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Fixed NPB

Niagara’s signature FixedBroker is a high density, high performance, NPB series that packs a lot of power into a compact, form factor. FixedBroker supports non-blocking fabric and a wide range of network interfaces up to 100Gb/400Gb*.

Some models offer multiple network interface types for easy aggregation and stacking. All FixedBroker models include Niagara’s pioneering Packet Heartbeat technology and FabricFlow technology for an exhaustive built-in set of packet broker features including replication, aggregation, filtering, tunnel handling,  load balancing, and more.

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Cloud Brocker

Cloud Broker

Niagara's cutting edge cloud packet broker is a virtual networking Cloud Intelligence Platform (CIP)  that aggregates, processes, filters network packets, and ingests intelligent metadata, allowing you to see the data and metadata that matters most - specifically, in cloud-native environments. With the help of cloud packet brokers, you can achieve hybrid cloud visibility, providing you with critical insights into network performance observability, security, and compliance across on-prem, private cloud, and public clouds.

 

                             

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Hybrid Packet
Broker / Bypass

Niagara's optimized all-in-one bypass TAP and Network Packet Broker.

Carrier-Grade Bypass Packet Broker Platform is part of the Niagara's Bypass carrier grade product line. The flagship 3808E supports up to two double bay field-replaceable modules, each with up to four bypass segments and integrated additional monitoring ports. This flexibility lets you configure the 3808E with up to eight 1/10/25/40/100Gb bypass segments, active TAP versatility and multi-functionality.

 

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Best Practices for Choosing a Network Packet Broker

Network packet brokers differ from manufacturer to manufacturer – and even within the manufacturer’s offerings, there may be significant variations (i.e. they will have distinctive features or levels of functionality). Therefore, differentiating and understanding the essential features versus the ‘nice-to-have’ ones – with respect to your current and future needs – is of paramount importance, especially when weighing initial costs versus ROI.

In addition to their standard general capabilities (such as previously mentioned traffic management, network robustness, deduplication, filtering, and aggregation) manufacturers are evolving their NPB offerings with new facets and features. As an example, some manufacturers now offer a new breed of modular NPBs that support both active and passive TAP devices (that can be easily attached to the NPBs). In this way, network designers can place a modular NPB inline, within the network, and then add as many TAP devices as needed (with their respective monitoring tools), thus significantly simplifying wiring, and other network design issues.

In addition, some NPB vendors have been known to customize the packet broker functionality, to tailor features to adapt to specific IT requirements or to specific industries and their needs.

Here is a handy mini-checklist of required and recommended ‘nice-to-have’ features to look for, when selecting a network packet broker:

  • High availability (HA) / business continuity (BC) robustness
  • Ability to handle deep packet inspection (DPI)
  • Selective or full data traffic aggregation and regeneration as well as load balancing
  • Filtering and data packet deduplication features
  • Centralized administration including a manageable interface (Web, GUI, or CLI)
  • Optimized buffering and other high-performance features
  • Support for inline monitoring devices
  • Support for passive inspection and analysis tools
  • Complete 360-degree packet data visibility across on-prem, cloud and hybrid cloud

Another aspect worth considering, is understanding how the NPB reacts to specific brokering issues, such as in a failover scenario (how it will handle traffic flow if it, or some connected network element, should fail). Of course, technical specifications such as latency and flow thresholds should also be taken into account when deciding on a selection.