NetScout Extends Intelligent Deep Packet Capture Capabilities To More Network Places Enabling Better Application Visibility

WESTFORD, Mass. -- September 09, 2009--NetScout Systems today announced the nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance, a lower capacity, compact form-factor member of the nGenius InfiniStream intelligent Deep Packet Capture (iDPC) appliance family. The new nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance extends "always-on" service-level visibility and continuous packet recording into more areas of the modern IP network, addressing the increasing need for comprehensive packet-level visibility and in-depth analysis of application and service traffic to better support end-to-end Unified Service Delivery Management.

With a growing reliance on always-on, anytime/anywhere access to business applications and services, IT organizations need to have a better understanding of the operational health of the service delivery environment. Now more than ever, IT professionals need extensive service-level knowledge with the ability to conduct back-in-time analysis of application and network traffic. While a number of different data sources are available, Deep Packet Capture, combining network packet analysis with packet storage, best enables IT staff to predict, identify and resolve application performance degradations faster and more efficiently. Until now, Deep Packet Capture capabilities have been typically limited to the ingress/egress of the data center, high-capacity links at the network core or at major aggregation points due to physical device size and relatively high costs. Alternatively, packet-based Probe technology has been deployed on secondary links and in remote locations to collect traffic statistics with rather limited on-demand packet capture capabilities. With today's pervasive service delivery challenges, IT personnel require more granular real-time and historical visibility into the service delivery environment to optimize performance and predict and prevent performance issues and speed the problem resolution process.

"Polling results from recent Gartner conferences show that network managers are increasingly being pressured to move up the stack, and not just prevent network performance problems, but meet application performance objectives," said Debra Curtis, research vice president at Gartner. "Out in departments and branch offices, users of business applications are usually unfamiliar with the intricacies of IT and often blame the network for any performance problems. With increased visibility in these areas, network managers can correlate network, unified communication service, and business application data to develop an integrated picture of overall system behavior, helping to prevent network performance problems and diagnose any issues that do occur."

Leveraging the deployment-proven intelligent Deep Packet Capture capabilities found in larger, higher capacity nGenius InfiniStream 6900 Series appliances, the new 2900 Series appliance has been designed and purpose-built for deployment in areas where there are cost and space constraints. Featuring 500 Gigabytes of storage capacity in a compact 1RU form factor, the nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance enables InfiniStream technology to be deployed more affordably in areas closer to the user, including mid-tier distribution points, wiring closets, branch offices, and remote data centers.

Available with Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, the nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance continuously captures every packet crossing the network, analyzing, indexing and storing these packets in real-time, with a high degree of accuracy. Whether used in a standalone mode or as part of the end-to-end, always-on nGenius Service Assurance Solution, the nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance reliably stores all network traffic providing statistical information about application performance, network usage and related traffic patterns. Network managers can access rich packet information in real-time or perform comprehensive historical forensic analysis of events to maintain peak performance of the service delivery environment and dramatically speed the diagnosis and resolution of performance issues to prevent service delivery degradations or downtime."Today's IT organizations need better strategic insight into the health and effectiveness of their service delivery environment. Having visibility closer to the user has long been known as a means to this end," said Steven Shalita, vice president of marketing, NetScout Systems. "The obstacle to achieving broader visibility has been that the physical size and cost of InfiniStream devices limited widespread deployment. The new nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance tackles this head on, enabling IT organizations to extend intelligent Deep Packet Capture capabilities to more network locations. As a result, IT staff gains better insight into real-time service dynamics along with immediate access to captured and stored packets for on-demand retrospective forensic analysis. The result is better end-to-end service delivery knowledge providing a more unified way in which to optimize and protect the delivery of business applications and services."

Migration Path for Existing NetScout Customers
Offering up to six times more storage and processing power than existing former Network General Distributed Sniffer?? devices and nGenius Probe technology, the new InfiniStream 2900 Series cost-effectively extends continuous packet capture capability to existing management environments -- further extending their analysis and service assurance analysis capabilities to meet the needs of today's growing network traffic and application growth. Through December 31, 2009, NetScout is offering a trade-in program that allows existing deployments of nGenius Probes and former Network General Distributed Sniffer devices to be upgraded to nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series Appliances.

Availability
The nGenius InfiniStream 2900 Series appliance is available now in 2-port and 4-port versions with support for 10/100/1000 copper and SFP-based fiber Gigabit Ethernet. Pricing begins at less than $20,000. Please contact NetScout or your NetScout authorized reseller for more information.