NetQuest WAN SIGINT Intercept
Automating and Simplifying Access to Optical WAN Signals Intelligence
Traffic Visibility Challenges for Optical Transport Networks
Gathering real-time network intelligence from Wide-Area Optical Transport Networks (OTN and SDH) networks is a high priority, mission-critical activity. Historically, gaining monitoring and interception access to traffic crossing these networks has been performed by deploying multiple network monitoring products not purposely designed for WAN Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) monitoring activities.
The challenge is accessing this traffic requires tapping thousands of fibers, each potentially carrying terabits of traffic with multiple speeds and physical layer transport protocols. Once the traffic is accessed, monitoring requires a significant amount of manual survey and configuration effort to identify and access the targeted IP traffic to generate any useful intelligence.
Once these challenges have been overcome, the upstream analysis tools must be compatible with the native traffic types in order to ingest and analyze the monitored traffic. Collectively this has been a very daunting, complex and expensive process that requires significant time, expertise, multiple monitoring platforms and analysis tools.
Simplifying Traffic Visibility for WAN
Transport Networks
NetQuest Intercept solutions are a family of purpose-built WAN SIGINT solutions that power a comprehensive access strategy for a variety of Optical WAN monitoring applications.
A NetQuest Intercept solution identifies, translates and extracts IP traffic carried over DWDM, Ethernet, OTN and legacy SDH networks and delivers line-rate advanced packet processing and enriched IPFIX metadata generation capabilities. Each is appliance a self-contained, purpose-built, monitoring solution that provides:
- Access to the Transport Network traffic for delivery to upstream monitoring tools
- Automated discovery and identification of physical layer attributes, protocols and traffic details to simplify access provisioning
- Conversion of native transport protocols and traffic to standard Ethernet IP Packets or IPFIX metadata to support common monitoring platforms
- Flexible packet flow conditioning for optimized packet traffic delivery
Flexible Multi-Service Transport Network
Monitoring Access
With NetQuest Interceptor Probes, WAN to LAN media translation is dramatically simplified enabling Ethernet-based tools to gain access to, and maintain, real-time visibility access regardless of the WAN interface’s data stream speed or its framing attributes, tributary hierarchy, or protocol transport.
NetQuest provides a comprehensive family of Interceptor Probes that enable access to traffic on a variety of Optical, Packet or TDM service networks including :
- DWDM
- SONET/SDH/Ethernet
- OTN Packet Optical
- 10G OTU2/OTU1
- T1/E1 – T3/E3
Without requiring knowledge of the underlying network provisioning, the NetQuest Interceptor Probes automate the discovery and reporting of the contents of a multi-layered optical, packet, or TDM network including services ranging from high speed OTN OTU-4 and 100GbE to LAN-PHY, OC-192/STM-64 and low speed T1/E1 and DS0.
Once operationalized, the NetQuest Interceptor Probe automates the process of continual network survey by continually updating to meet changing provisioning and traffic characteristics.
Auto-Discovery Automates Complex
Monitoring Requirements
The cornerstone of NetQuest Interceptor technology is its unique Auto-Discovery process. This NetQuest breakthrough innovation automates the analysis of the digital signal hierarchy of each traffic stream to determine signal speed, framing format, and the channelization structure.
Auto-Discovery identifies which tributary containers are used and the types of framed streams within the containers – for example, PoS, GFP, or HDLC. Additional analysis of the framed stream exposes the types of protocols in use, such as PPP, MPLS, PPPoE, IPV4/IPV6, and MAC addresses.
The NetQuest Interceptor auto-discovery process greatly simplifies WAN SIGINT monitoring operations. This is essential when monitoring private line or virtual private line services because bandwidth allocation and protocol usage can vary between circuits because they are determined by the specific termination equipment.
Transport network provisioning is dynamic and can change on a daily or even an hourly basis. To proactively identify provisioning changes, the automated discovery process continually runs in the background eliminating the need to re-analyze circuit utilization and provisioning. This assures critical surveillance is maintained and simplifies recalibrating upstream monitoring configurations and tools.
NetQuest Interceptor Product Family
The NetQuest Interceptor product family is purpose-built to enable fast and accurate access to optical and TDM transport networks by consolidating the functions of multiple network access elements and automating discovery and monitoring access to simplify monitoring effectiveness.
The NetQuest Interceptor product family scales to meet the most challenging requirements of transport network surveillance and supports a comprehensive range of transport network architectures including DWDM, 100G OTN, channelized SONET/SDH, and legacy PDH circuits.
NetQuest OMX3200 for
OTN and SDH WAN Monitoring
NetQuest OMX3200 monitoring access to 100G OTU4, 10G OTU2/2e/1e and 10G STM-64 circuits (concatenated or channelized) including WAN auto-discovery and intelligent traffic intercept.
NetQuest I-2400
Interceptor for SONET/SDH
NetQuest I-2400 Interceptor provides access to packet streams on concatenated or channelized SONET/SDH links ranging from high-speed OC-48/STM-16 to T3/E3, T1/E1, fractional E1/T1, and DS0.