VSS Monitoring Inc, a developer of technology that enables network monitoring and security to be carried out in a non-intrusive manner, has launched a GbE aggregator test access port for use on redundant networks.

TAPs are devices that enable monitoring and security products to connect to a link they want to look at and see all the traffic going through it. This is done transparently, without an IP address, so that the TAP does not become a single point of failure.

There are various types of TAP. Basic ones take the two half-duplex streams on a link, duplicate it and send it to the monitoring device, be it an IDS/IPS system, protocol analyzer, RMON probe or other type of product. Regeneration TAPs, meanwhile, do the duplication but send the data out as full duplex to multiple devices rather than just one.

Port aggregators, a.k.a. aggregator TAPs, duplicate data like regular TAPs, but they then send all the duplicated data in an aggregated form to a single port on the monitoring device, hence reducing the number of NIC cards required at that end. Similarly, link aggregator TAPs combine several links, the one disadvantage being that the combined inputs cannot exceed the bandwidth on the output or traffic will be dropped at peak times.

The new 2x1 Aggregation TAP from Burlingame, California-based VSS sits inline in both active and passive networks, allowing both to be constantly monitored on a single interface, by a single IDS or forensics device. It receives data from two full-duplex networks of varying speeds, aggregating them onto a single, transmit-only port for monitoring, with pass-through being enabled on a standard UTP Cat 5 cable.

VSS CEO Martin Breslin said the new TAP was “the right fit for monitoring redundant networks,” because it can ensure uninterrupted visibility during a failover in either gateway or core networks.

“Visibility loss… can render the forensics or IDS tool useless, forcing a customer to spend years and millions of dollars to recover,” he said.

The TAP features VSS’s proprietary Link Safe technology, whereby an intelligent controller enables link failures to be observed by network elements on both sides of the TAP. This supporting redundancy in routers and switches whenever a link fails. For ease and speed of response, it has multiple front-panel LEDs for an immediate view of power status, link/speed and error readings.

Founded in 2003, privately held VSS is one of the companies challenging market leader Net Optics in the TAP market, its claim to fame being its distributed TAP offering.

Breslin said that whereas competing products require TAPs to be monitored in situ, i.e. wherever they are deployed around a network, “we make devices with high port densities and outbound Web servers that enable centralized, remote monitoring.”

In other words, whereas traditional TAPs must have the IDS/IPS or forensics device attached directly to them, resulting in multiple licenses for the providers of the monitoring technologies, VSS’s distributed capability enables a single instance of the monitoring device to sit centrally and view results from across the estate of TAPs.

The sheer cost of multiple licenses for these monitoring technologies within other TAP vendors’ architectures has tended to mean that enterprises have skimped on their deployment, “leaving them compromised on their monitoring visibility.”

VSS declined to get specific on pricing for the device, but it did reveal that the low port density gigabit aggregators generally range from about $1,800 to about $2,800 list price in the US.