Network Critical launched its new family of SmartNA PortPlus packet broker appliances, introducing simple scale-out visibility to make it easier to monitor and secure dynamic, growing networks.

Network Critical’s PortPlus line is built from the ground up to scale rapidly as customer networks grow, bridging the gap between today’s ultra-high-speed networks and existing management, monitoring and security tools. Thanks to its distributed scale-out architecture, as IT teams and tools need visibility across more ports or faster networks, they simply add additional PortPlus units that behave as a single, larger, faster appliance.

“There’s a reason companies are adopting modern scale-out infrastructure for things like cloud processing or data storage: lower cost, easier management and simple expansion. We think it’s high time they can grow their network visibility the same way,” said Alastair Hartrup, Global CEO of Network Critical. “As networks become multi-vendor, multi-cloud, and multi-fabric, companies are struggling with the visibility needed to maintain tight control, hardened security and adequate service-level performance. PortPlus allows them to finally grow that layer of persistent visibility right along with changing demands.”

A high-density, high-performance packet broker solution, the PortPlus family can easily scale from 54 to 194 ports and handle 1/10/25/40/100G speeds – all through one flexible series of appliances. With high throughput and the ability to manage traffic at a wide range of speeds, it acts as a central hub that gathers and distributes the right packet data to the right network monitoring or security tools as needed. PortPlus gives network tools and systems the packet-level access needed to monitor and protect critical, complex and ever-changing infrastructure, from hybrid or software-defined networking to virtualization and more. Additional load balancing capabilities allow organizations to leverage aging network monitoring tools that may struggle to keep up with rapidly increasing network speeds. This is vital for optimizing tool performance and maintaining budget discipline in dynamic and growing infrastructures.

Network growth and the addition of new tools and systems inevitably requires more packet brokers to keep pace. PortPlus breaks this cycle, allowing companies to add ports or increase performance as needed while still maintaining easy management of the expanded system. Customers can start with a single PortPlus 54-port appliance that provides a foundation for understanding what is happening on the network. To add scale and density, additional 48-port appliances can be added - to give up to 194 ports. Regardless of the number of PortPlus appliances involved in a given setup, the system functions as one large collection of ports, and is always configured and managed through a single-pane management interface. This design delivers a scale-out visibility layer that’s cost-effective, easy to manage and flexible, eliminating the need for businesses to completely overhaul their systems and purchase new “scaled up” equipment every time they reach a growth point.

The PortPlus system is managed entirely through Network Critical’s revolutionary, patented Drag-n-Vu interface, which allows organizations to filter traffic based on IP addresses, protocols, ports and VLANs to provide improved network visibility. The Drag-n-Vu system allows for fast and error-free configurations and makes it easy to add complex filter rules and port mapping while minimizing configuration time and costly mistakes.

Key Product Features:

- Designed around a next-generation network and server-ready PortPlus base unit with 48 x 1/10/25G ports and 6 x 40/100G ports.

- Able to handle 1/10/25/40/100G speeds and provide a future-proof, scale-out visibility layer with up to 194 ports.

- Features a programmable architecture built to support workload density, emerging protocols and new technologies.

- Managed entirely through the intelligent and intuitive Drag-n-Vu user interface for fast, error-free configuration of the entire system.

- Features a 1.8 Tbps system throughput supports Maximum Line Rate on every interface

- Enabled with Dual Hot swap power supplies and fans for greater resilience.

“Every business today needs granular insight across their entire network, and the new PortPlus family delivers that visibility in spades, without the need to constantly scale up to larger, more expensive packet broker technology,” said Hartrup. “The PortPlus family allows our customers to scale their networks in a cost-effective manner, accommodating legacy tools with lower-speed ports while quickly enabling the addition of newer tools with greater processes capabilities. Our disruptive design and superior technology allow organizations to send the right traffic to the right tools and maintain a scale-out visibility layer that supports critical management, monitoring and security functions as networks grow.”