APCON Announces New IntellaFlex Packet Slicing Capabilities

Packet slicing solution expands capabilities of APCON's time stamping blade for Telecommunications Applications

Singapore – (June 19, 2012) – APCON, Inc., the industry leader for intelligent solutions for network monitoring and security, today announced a major advance in its network monitoring switch technology. Packet slicing capability has been added to the company's 18-port 10G Ethernet time stamping blade. When integrated with the company's IntellaPatchSeries 3000 network monitoring switch, this new blade adds packet slicing and nanosecond-level time stamping capabilities to the extensive APCON network monitoring feature set.

"These new features make this blade even more versatile. Our customers have requested the ability to slice the payloads from packets in order to maximize tool throughput. This feature combines with our aggregation and filtering capabilities to make APCON the most effective network monitoring switch on the market," says Richard Rauch, President and CEO of APCON.

Challenge: Network Monitoring Overload

At telecommunications companies everywhere, packet-switched traffic is exploding as customers switch to smart phones and tablets. Analyzing that ever-increasing volume of traffic is critical for network security and mandated record-keeping, and the monitoring tools that were adequate a few years ago are now overwhelmed.

APCON network monitoring switches are used for routing copies of data traffic passing through the primary network down to network analyzers, recorders, and intrusion detection/prevention systems. APCON has built its business on optimizing the network monitoring process for complete end-to-end visibility, and now the next step is to actively and intelligently reduce the volume of data in the monitoring system. This helps companies save time and money while maintaining a comprehensive network monitoring program.

Solution: Packet Slicing

The solution to exploding network traffic volume is to effectively reduce the monitored data to just that portion that is required for analysis. Many tools require only packet header information – and in some cases the actual packet payload information may be confidential, and storing extra copies may present a security risk. Packet slicing removes the payload portion of a packet and passes only the header down to the network monitoring tools, again preserving tool bandwidth.

Time Stamping and Packet Slicing Blade and IntellaPatch Switches

APCON's time stamping and packet slicing blade offers 18 ingress ports. Each port is capable of stamping all incoming packets to the nanosecond level and slicing all outgoing packets before passing them through the switch and on to network monitoring tools.

This IntellaFlex blade is compatible across APCON's family of IntellaPatch switches, and is compatible with APCON's line of 10G IntellaPatch and IntellaFlex blades, providing access to packet aggregation, filtering, and data rate conversion features. These features allow network managers to monitor 10G links with 1G tools, saving up to tens of thousands of dollars per tool.

For further enquiries regarding APCON, please contact Gerard Fianen.

19-06-2012