Network Instruments Boosts Capacity On Portable Products

Network Instruments has announced the second generation of its GigaStor Portable line of in-the-field network recorders. Previously available in one or two gigabyte configurations, the new models are now available with up to four GB of storage and upgraded hardware specifications. The list price starts at $30,000. The GigaStor Portable is designed to be a luggable network forensics solution, enabling network engineers to capture, analyze, and report on all network activity at remote locations, as well as reconstruct the moment in time a network problem occurred.  

According to Network Instruments, customer demand has driven the upgrades.  Many of their customers have seen their network traffic rise sharply, which in turn, lowers the amount of time that the current GigaStor products can capture.  For example, customers that previously were able to capture a full day of network traffic started filling up the analyzer in under 12 hours. Additionally, with effectively double the amount of data the analyzer may have process, both hardware and software enhancements were built into the second-generation GigaStor Portable to enable the same level of analysis and reporting performance.

One of Network Instruments' customers, NEC Unified, chose the GigaStor Portable for its value and capacity.  An integrator of unified communication solutions, NEC Unified deploys the portable tools to customer locations before, during, and after deployments to not only troubleshoot any issues that may arise, but also to develop an baseline understanding of the current environment.   The GigaStor Portable also enables NEC Unified to show its customers the impact of the deployed UC solutions and ensure that the deployment stays within the parameters defined in the project.

As the data needs for enterprises continues to grow at exponential rates, the capacity needs of network analyzers such as Network Instruments' products need to keep pace.  The concept of retroactive network analysis (RNA) relies on being able to get a full view of network traffic at a given moment in time, and without sufficient storage capacity, network administrators could miss the very problem they were trying to capture.