NetScout Systems announced the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch, a highly extensible chassis-based, data center-class network monitoring switch that expands upon NetScout’s initial entry into the market with the nGenius 1500 series packet flow switch.

The nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch enables scalable, highly available access to network traffic across distributed networks for use by the nGenius Service Assurance Solution or any network monitoring, performance management or security system.

Based upon technology from the acquisition of ONPATH Technologies, the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch delivers market-leading advances in performance and capacity with the highest 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) port densities per rack unit, and per chassis, with an architecture ready to support 100 GbE interfaces.

The nGenius 3900 series switch delivers intelligent traffic conditioning features on every port with sustained line rate performance, and ultra-low latency.

NetScout also announced availability of the nGenius PFS Management software, providing unified management and provisioning for the 3900 series switch that simplifies and automates manageability for large-scale, multi-location network monitoring deployments.

With the continued high growth in complex service traffic flowing across enterprise, service provider and cloud-networks, the challenge of monitoring large, distributed IP service delivery networks continues to mount. The proliferation of high-speed 10 GbE network links coupled with the increasing number of management and security devices that require access to packet-flow traffic is driving the need for a higher capacity, more flexible and automated network monitoring fabric to facilitate ubiquitous traffic access. To achieve pervasive visibility, organizations need a higher density, seamless monitoring fabric that can provide the scale, capacity and flexibility needed to efficiently manage the distribution of critical traffic flows for monitoring and security applications.

“As data centers consolidate and IP networks begin the next wave of transformation to support cloud deployments, the migration from one Gigabit to 10 Gigabit links is further adding to the challenges faced by IT teams tasked with monitoring and securing the network. IDC research shows that shipments of 10 Gigabit ports in 2012 have grown at more than 70 percent year over year, and we forecast the adoption of 40 Gigabit to accelerate at even a faster rate starting in 2013,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, network infrastructure at IDC.

“Many organizations are now building a monitoring fabric to simplify and streamline the distribution of traffic flows to extend the life of existing management tools. NetScout has leveraged its technology leadership position in the performance management market to deliver a powerful, differentiated network monitoring platform. With this announcement, IDC believes NetScout is well positioned to address the needs of the growing network monitoring switch market.”

Built from deployment-proven data center-class switching technology, the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch combines the scale, intelligence, flexibility and availability needed to construct large-scale network monitoring fabrics.

The nGenius 3900 series switch is available in a one-, three- and 12-slot chassis.

A common high-density interface module provides local switching and packet processing capabilities that can be seamlessly interchanged across the chassis series. Each module is powered by a 720 Gbps full-duplex switching engine (1.44 Tbps aggregate), and can scale to support from 16 to 576 ports of 10 GbE and up to 48 ports of 40 GbE in a single chassis.

Any port can be dynamically configured to support either incoming or outgoing traffic flows with layer 2/3/4 wire-speed intelligent packet filtering, port tagging and load balancing capabilities on every port at line rate, with no performance degradation or latency impact. The 12-slot chassis contains a 5.76 Tbps full-duplex switching fabric (11.5 Tbps aggregate), providing ample headroom to support future 100 GbE interfaces.

Designed for mission-critical environments, the nGenius 3900 series switch offers a highly available redundant architecture with a fault tolerant switch fabric, non-stop switching across the chassis and stateful redundancy for the management system.

NetScout is also delivering the nGenius PFS Management software to support the deployment and administration of large-scale network monitoring fabrics constructed with the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch. The nGenius PFS Management software provides unified device management and enables end-to-end automated drag-and-drop provisioning across distributed chassis.

This massive scale enables administrators to rapidly build, store, schedule, and execute configuration changes and perform software updates across all deployed switches regardless of their physical location. Planned integration with the nGenius Service Assurance Solution will further extend manageability, enabling organizations to control and provision the nGenius switch from within nGenius Performance Manager.

“NetScout continues to drive change in the network monitoring switch market that we started with our acquisition of Simena in November of 2011, and we are committed to establishing a leadership role and aggressively capturing market share,” said Steven Shalita, vice president, marketing at NetScout. “The introduction of the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch and the nGenius PFS Management software strengthens our Unified Service Delivery Management strategy and establishes NetScout as a definitive technology leader in this segment. Building on our industry-leading nGenius Service Assurance Solution, this introduction will enable enterprise and service provider organizations to address a diverse range of deployment requirements across highly distributed network environments to reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency and increase the utilization of valuable IT resources.”