White Paper - Network Instruments Gigabit Technology (PDF)
Gigabit Technologies
Do your users complain about slow server performance over the gigabit backbone? Are you worried that a growing user base threatens to swamp your gigabit infrastructure? How much of that expensive hardware is actually being utilized?
Network Instruments Observer products can answer these questions and more by showing you what's happening "on the gigabit wire," and telling you what it means.
For sites with low utilization (well under 50%), perhaps all you need is one of our Observer software-only analyzers. However, to guarantee full-duplex capture at wire speed, one of our hardware/software solutions is required: Gigabit Observer Suite System, Gigabit Rack Mount Probe, or Probe Kit. For network administrators that utilize trunking, the GigaTrunk Probe helps monitor load-balanced traffic. All of these solutions include a high-speed full duplex interface card and an optical or copper TAP (Test Access Point) to deliver:
• Full duplex, wire-speed gigabit capture, analysis, and statistics.
• Passive and independent capture of gigabit traffic - the TAP does not affect gigabit traffic, nor does it depend on switch hardware mirroring or any
other method of "capture" that can introduce its own errors into the traffic stream being analyzed.
• The ability to connect and disconnect the analyzer without any gigabit traffic disruption.
• Full Support for Jumbo Frames.
The Gigabit Rack Mount Probe, Probe Kit and GigaTrunk Probes work with Expert Observer and Observer Suite to offer the best in real-time data capture, monitoring and reporting:
• Capture and decode network traffic, letting you diagnose and solve access and performance problems.
• Monitor the health and security of your network with helpful views of critical network error and bandwidth statistics.
• Set up automatic notifications that will email or page you if errors exceed a configurable threshold, or other criteria depending the protocol under analysis.
For a more detailed look at how Network Instruments can help you get a handle on your gigabit traffic:
• Visit the Gigabit Observer Suite System, Gigabit Rack Mount Probe, and Gigabit Probe Kit information pages.
• Check out the GigaTrunk Probe specifically designed for trunked environments
• Learn about the GigaStor Probe built for complex data-mining tasks
• Download an evaluation of Observer. You do not need gigabit hardware to run the simulation demo.
• To learn how Network Instruments Observer can help manage any gigabit network, see Options for Gigabit Analysis Using Observer, which
details what Observer products (both hardware and software) are available for different gigabit environments.
• See the product detail page for each analyzer in the Observer family
-Observer
-Expert Observer
-Observer Suite | 
