Packet Filtering - How it Works
In addition to the flexibility and functionality of custom port assignments, link aggregation, and port regeneration, the Filtered SINGLEstream™ can take your tools to the next level with powerful data filtering.
Apply bit mask filters on the network (ingress) ports, and you have the ability to collect (pre-aggregation) only the data you need to see. By removing the irrelevant data before aggregation, you significantly reduce the chance of port over-subscription, while creating a unique set of filters for each connected monitoring tool. All filtering is hardware based and can be applied to any field of the 64-byte header. The Filtered SINGLEstream™ comes with numerous pre-built filters but can be easily customized, allowing you to drill down to specific IP, Subnet, MAC, VLAN, application port, or customized packet on the network.
The Filtered SINGLEstream™ is a far superior solution than any port regenerator, aggregator, and matrix switch.
Traditional regeneration taps, in addition to not being able to filter traffic, don’t aggregate data, so they cannot provide full duplex data to monitoring tools that need it. The same problem exists for matrix switches. Finally, without the ability to filter, multi-port aggregators (“many to one”) put into high-traffic areas can easily suffer from port over-subscription caused when the inflow of data exceeds the capacity of the output port.
The Filtered SINGLEstream™ suffers none of these limitations and opens the door to a whole new way of managing the diverse and ever-growing set of tools you need to deploy on your network.
Diagram: Port Level Packet Filtering
