Net Optics Director manual Typical Application, Network Links

Director

Typical Application

The following diagram shows a typical application using Director to implement a comprehensive, consolidated monitoring infrastructure.

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1

www.netoptics.com

IDS

Analyzer 2

RMON 1

A	B
A
B
Analyzer 1
Forensic

RMON 2

Figure 2: Director-centric network monitoring infrastructure

In this example, eight network links are monitored by six monitoring devices. The company's external access is protect- ed by a firewall, shown in the upper left of the diagram. The link runs through a router, then in-line through Director, and then to a switch that distributes traffic throughout a department.

Network Links

The rest of the department's switches are shown, but only the connections to Director are illustrated. The four depart- ment switches shown in the lower right are cross-connected for fault tolerance. All four of the cross-connected links are passed in-line through Director (as indicated by the slanting purple lines) so they can be thoroughly monitored for performance tuning, security, and trouble-shooting. Because so many critical links pass in-line through Director, it's good to know that they are completely passive connections—Director does not slow down or interfere with the in-line traffic, and the links stay open to pass traffic even if both of the Director power supplies are removed. (When power is removed, 10/100/1000 Copper in-line links may be dropped for a short period of time—­less than 1 second—while relays switch to open the link. Subsequently, the network re-establishes the links and traffic resumes flowing.)

Purple line indicates an in-line Tap

Figure 3: Detail of in-line Taps shown in Figure 2

In the middle of Figure 2, three other departmental switches are monitored through their Span ports. One of the switches handles 10GbE traffic, so its Span port goes to one of the Director 10GbE XFP ports. One of the other switches' 1GbE Span ports carries three distinct types of traffic–e-mail, VoIP, and Web pages–as indicated by the three colored circles on the Span link.

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