Best Practices for Visibility Architecture Tap Planning

White Papers

When it comes to data monitoring, ensuring proper access to network data is the most critical thing you can do. Everything else, data filtering and the conversion of data into actionable information, are all dependent on that initial data being correct and relevant. If this practice is ignored, you can, and will, end up realizing the well-known adage – “Garbage In equals Garbage Out”. This white paper is designed to be a generic guide to help assist you in optimizing the access layer of your Visibility Architecture so you can capture that correct information.

As you can see in Figure 1, there are three different frameworks that can be incorporated into a visibility architecture: the access framework, the out-of-band visibility framework, and the inline security framework. These three frameworks take the raw data from the network and manipulate it as necessary to get the appropriate data to the correct monitoring and analysis tool(s).

The access layer framework is naturally focused on creating access to network data. This is the base framework that then feeds data to packet brokers in either the out-of-band visibility or inline security frameworks where these data points can then be manipulated before being sent on to the appropriate monitoring tools.