Packet Design Unveils New IP Traffic-Analysis System

Packet Design this week is launching the latest version of its IP traffic-analysis system, which lets businesses track and assess application traffic by particular application and CoS (class of service) on all network segments. The company says Traffic Explorer 2.0 gives IT managers the information they need to diagnose and fix IP application problems quickly and efficiently using what the vendor calls "path awareness" to understand the impact of routing changes on network application performance.

The previous version of the product, Traffic Explorer 1.0, showed aggregate traffic using a subset of flow attributes. The vendor says the new version takes an important step beyond that by using all flow data, including source and/or destination address or prefix, transport protocol, port number or range and CoS metrics like DSCP (DiffServ Code Point) and ToS (Type of Service). As a result, IT managers can track traffic by application, department, CoS, and other groupings defined by various flow attributes.Traffic Explorer 2.0 gathers information from network locations to outline traffic flows across the entire topology. Businesses can use the collected data to monitor network usage and find out how application performance is affected by a routing change or an outage. IT managers also can use this data to make decisions about future capacity requirements.

Version 2.0 is available now and starts at $190,000. The suite includes one Flow Analyzer, one Modeling Engine, and two Flow Recorders. The Route Explorer, a route-analytics system that tracks network routing protocols and real-time and historical network topology data, is sold separately, at $20,000.