Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:51:11 GMT – Napatech

ANDOVER, Massachusetts, October 17, 2012 – According to Napatech, the world’s largest vendor of intelligent adapters for network monitoring and analysis, the acceleration in data speeds and volumes in telecom networks is increasing the need for real-time network management solutions. Network probes have been identified as strategic components in assuring customer quality of experience and enabling more innovative services. 

In the latest Napatech Time to ReThink insight brief released today, entitled “Time to ReThink Network Management”, Napatech outlines the opportunity for both carriers and OEM equipment vendors in addressing the need for real-time network management. 

“Telecom networks and mobile networks in particular are under pressure”, stated Henrik Brill Jensen, CEO, Napatech. “The increase in data speeds and volumes is aggravating challenges that carriers have been facing for years with regard to flat revenues in the face of rising costs. In addition, customers are forming deeper relationships with Internet content providers, which threatens to side-line carriers. Many agree that adopting a more customer-centric approach based on end-to-end quality of experience and innovative new services is the path forward. Network management is therefore the foundation on which this will be achieved.” 

Traditional telecom management has relied on polling mechanisms to provide snapshots of what is happening in the network. With speeds increasing from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps and beyond, and the dynamic and bursty nature of Ethernet networks, real-time network management based on network probes is generally seen as necessary. Work by the TMForum Managing Customer Experience (MCE) and other similar projects have identified network probes as strategic in providing the real-time data necessary for end-to-end customer experience management. 

“Network equipment vendors have an opportunity to provide carriers with an end-to-end real-time network management solution that is strategic to their needs”, continued Jensen. “The key is ensuring that the network probes supporting this solution have the scalability to keep up with accelerating network speeds and volumes in a flexible way.” 

With over 100 OEM vendor customers, Napatech is on the front-line of addressing these challenges with products that help network probe vendors to effectively design high performance probes using standard off-the-shelf server hardware. Napatech intelligent network adapters can be deployed off-line and in-line and can be used for full-load transmission for network emulation or user simulation. Combined with the processing power of the latest standard servers, this provides a flexible platform for equipment vendors to build high-performance network probes. 

“We have the capability to merge traffic not only from several ports on the same adapter, but also from several adapters into a single analysis stream”, added Jensen. “It is possible to have a mix of 1G, 10G and 40G ports in the same probe providing a single, time-ordered analysis stream thanks to our nanosecond precision time-stamping. In addition, our ability to detect well-known services on the adapter itself offloads a great deal of analysis work from software to hardware allowing even more to be done in the standard server CPUs. We can provide all of this guaranteeing delivery of all data in real-time.” 

Using Napatech network adapters in standard servers, equipment vendors can provide a variety of network probes solutions based on one development effort supporting from 1G to 40G network speeds. The network probes can form the basis for an end-to-end network management infrastructure that can enable carriers to improve quality of experience and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty with innovative services. 

To explore this topic in more detail visit www.napatech.com/time_to_rethink.html 

For more information visit www.napatech.com 

About Napatech 

Napatech is the leading OEM supplier of 40 GbE, 10 GbE and 1 GbE intelligent adapters for real-time network analysis with over 100,000 Ethernet ports deployed. Napatech network adapters provide real-time packet capture and transmission with full line-rate throughput and zero packet loss no matter the packet size. Intelligent features enable off-load of data traffic processing and packet analysis normally performed in the CPU. This results in more processing power for the network monitoring, analysis, management, test, measurement, security or optimization application being supported. Napatech has sales, marketing and R&D offices in Mountain View (CA), Andover (MA), Washington D.C., Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (South Korea), Sao Paolo (Brazil) and Copenhagen (Denmark). 

For more information visit us at: www.napatech.com