Abstract

Rapid increases in network traffic volumes (including the move to 40GbE), security threats, and application complexity all underscore the importance for lossless data capture, analysis, and storage to provide crucial raw data for post-event analysis and remediation. Critical functions like network security forensics and service troubleshooting need to have 100 percent of the network data available if they are expected to be 100 percent effective in their jobs.

Viavi commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance of its Observer GigaStor family of capture, analysis, and storage solutions. Specifically, tests were focused on benchmarking maximum sustained full-packet capture/write rates and greatest burst performance with no packet loss while delivering robust AES-256 data-at-rest encryption of stored network data.

Tests showed that the Observer GigaStor 288T could capture data through 8x10GbE and 2x40GbE taps at 41.6Gbps or 14.3 million packets per second (pps) with burst rates of 60Gbps.