Smart tap technology offers several advantages over traditional taps and spans. First of all, smart taps normally incorporate fail-over technology, which prevents a failed tap from interrupting network traffic. What's more, smart taps are designed to capture all traffic and do not suffer from lost packets due to network congestion and high traffic demands. Smart taps are also easier to manage, and it is easier to incorporate technologies that allow administrators to filter and direct traffic captures to different devices for analysis.
For example, if an administrator wants to focus only on HTTPS traffic to identify a security problem, the smart tap can be configured to capture only that traffic and ignore all other traffic. That simplifies the analysis process and reduces the need to shape the data before processing.
Mac-Stoker says, "Smart taps bring needed capabilities to modern data centers and are becoming more cost effective. If someone is refreshing a data center or commissioning a new deployment, smart taps should be incorporated into the design."
Obviously, that sage advice seems relevant as companies move deeper into cloud-based technologies and are re-engineering data centers for private, public and hybrid clouds--a situation where traffic analysis and security takes on new precedence.
Major players in the smart tap market include Gigamon, Net Optics, Network Critical and Network Instruments, all of which offer proprietary taps with integrated intelligence that provides the foundation for selective analytics.
A recent report from Frost & Sullivan confirms that the need for network tap technology is poised for additional growth, especially in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets. The research firm reported in February that the EMEA intrusion detection systems market earned revenues of €1.25 billion in 2010 and estimates this to reach €1.34 billion by 2017, mostly driven by revenues from the residential, commercial and critical infrastructure segments.
