A Network Packet Broker (NPB) is a visibility platform that aggregates, filters, and distributes network traffic from multiple sources to security, monitoring, and performance tools. It ensures each tool receives the right traffic, in the right format, without overloading the network or the tools themselves.

Modern networks generate massive volumes of traffic across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. A Network Packet Broker eliminates blind spots, reduces tool overload, and enables consistent traffic delivery for security, compliance, and performance monitoring across the entire infrastructure.

Niagara Networks’ Packet Brokers support interfaces ranging from 1G to 400G, including 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G, and 400G, depending on the platform and deployment model.

Yes. Niagara Packet Brokers are designed for hybrid visibility, integrating physical packet brokers with virtual packet brokers (CIP) to provide consistent traffic processing across on-prem, private cloud, and public cloud environments such as AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Packet Brokers ensure security tools receive clean, relevant traffic by applying filtering, slicing, deduplication, and load balancing. This improves threat detection accuracy, reduces false positives, and prevents tool overload -especially in high-throughput environments.

By adding Packetron, Niagara’s packet acceleration engine, Niagara Packet Brokers gain advanced traffic intelligence capabilities, including inline TLS/SSL decryption and passive encrypted traffic analysis, enabling decrypted traffic or rich metadata to be distributed simultaneously to multiple security and monitoring tools.

By adding Packetron, Niagara Packet Brokers extend visibility up to Layer 7, enabling application-aware traffic processing, advanced metadata extraction, and intelligent policy-based traffic distribution.

Yes. Niagara Packet Brokers are vendor-agnostic, field-proven in some of the world’s largest and most demanding networks, and interoperable with leading third-party security, monitoring, and networking tools. This allows organizations to integrate best-of-breed solutions from top-tier cybersecurity and networking vendors while evolving their visibility architecture without replacing existing investments.

Network Packet Brokers are used by:

• SOC and NOC teams
• Network and security architects
• Service providers and data centers
• Enterprises with high-speed, hybrid, or regulated networks

By filtering and optimizing traffic before it reaches tools, Packet Brokers reduce licensing costs, extend tool lifespan, and minimize the need for over-provisioning monitoring and security platforms.

Yes. Niagara Packet Brokers are designed for architectural expansion, allowing organizations to scale capacity, performance, and functionality without forklift upgrades or complex platform replacements. Existing deployments can be extended incrementally as requirements evolve. For any use case, Niagara visibility experts assess field requirements and recommend the optimal expansion platform to match application needs and ensure an efficient, future-proof deployment.