IN-LINE BYPASS SOLUTIONS

Ensuring Network Availability while Implementing and Managing In-Line Appliances

A Bypass Switch ensures your network’s most important data doesn’t fail even when in-line monitoring devices do.

Don’t let monitoring tool failures turn into costly network outages

Engineered to fit networks of all sizes, bypass switches from Datacom Systems provide fail-safe network protection, high-availability, and redundant security for in-line monitoring deployments.

The Best Practice for Deploying & Managing In-Line Monitoring Appliances

Many of today’s security solutions are designed to sit “in-line” right between two network devices where you want to monitor traffic, such as a router and a switch. Placing a monitoring appliance directly in-line can introduce several potential issues:

  • If the device fails, the link goes down, or there is a power outage, the in-line tool creates a single point of failure (SPOF) on the network.
  • Appliance processing or oversubscription can increase latency, increase delays and degrade network performance
  • Data integrity can be compromised by frame misalignment or dropped packets

Example of a typical in-line appliance deployment

In-line appliances create the risk of a single point of failure

intrusion prevention system
IPS failure
An in-line bypass switch, overcomes this problem and helps avoid costly downtime by providing
  • a safe fail-over solution to keep networks up and running optimally if an in-line appliance fails or is experiencing issues
  • the capability to implement and manage in-line tools without having to disrupt the network or impact business availability when tools require maintenance or replacement
diagram of bypass switch implementation
Heartbeat Mode provides the ability to monitor the health of in-line appliances by sending and receiving a heartbeat packet. A user-programmable heartbeat packet can be injected into the monitoring port link to determine availability of attached monitoring devices or help determine delay due to high traffic volume.
 

High Availability Mode for Redundant Monitoring Solutions

In High Availability mode, a primary and secondary appliance is implemented with a bypass switch.

application drawing

The bypass will swap between the primary and secondary appliance in the event of a loss of heartbeats or link. This allows the services provided by the appliance to be maintained even in the event of an appliance failure.

application drawing
in-line bypass switch ds-2408

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