Ixia Vision ONE Packet Brokers

Large enterprises have many security and network-related needs, from traffic monitoring and inspecting decrypted traffic, to regulatory requirements and understanding bandwidth utilization. Network packet brokers (NPBs) tackle this challenge by providing a way to increase visibility across the network so networking tools can perform at peak efficiency.

Ixia’s Vision ONE helps solve the issue of brokering traffic at impressive line rates. Moreover, it enables organizations to understand traffic better and, ultimately, protect their environment by getting the most out of their networking and security appliances.

SANS reviewed Vision ONE to understand how it performs from a basic packet broker perspective, on an inline deployment and how it handles application development. To do so, we considered typical enterprise deployment scenarios where an NPB would be implemented in various capacities.

Specifically, we wanted to explore the most relevant circumstances for such a tool and the features that would aid our efforts in monitoring inline and out-of-band packets. Our other goals were to learn more about how this product dealt with encrypted payloads and high throughput, how it could be tuned to increase efficiency, and who would benefit the most from implementing Vision ONE.