B4N Visibility Fabric

B4N Visibility Fabric is technology for the organization of scalable factories of TAP aggregation on the basis of switches 10/25/40/100G with an open architecture.

On May 5, 2017 the Brain4Net company announced start of the solution B4N Visibility Fabric for creation of factories of TAP aggregation on platform 10/25/40/100G of switches with an open architecture.

The product helps to create the intelligent distributed network capable to aggregate, filter and replicate traffic from different sections of network and to transfer him to centralized control systems, monitoring and security.

B4N Visibility Fabric helps to organize scalable network factories of delivery of data for monitoring from the devices mirroring traffic to security systems - an intrusion prevention (Intrusion Prevention Systems – IPS), the systems of privileged information loss prevention (Data Loss Prevention – DLP) and firewalls. System architecture provides a scaling option from one-two switches to multilevel cascade factories from tens of switches.

The scenario of system operation can be represented so: the mirrored traffic from hardware TAP devices is delivered to OpenFlow-switches for additional classification and balancing between several copies of monitors and data analysis. Collected traffic is aggregated and filtered in factory on the basis of the set rules, the corresponding rules of a flow are created. The filtered traffic is delivered to analyzers and other monitors.

Centralized operation by network factory provides B4N Controller – the B4N Service Platform component which is responsible for purpose of rules of filtering and routing of the mirrored traffic from hardware TAP modules, providing distribution of flows between analysis modules. The controller provides the graphical interface of system management, REST API for integration with the third-party systems of data preparation.

According to the statement of developers, for May 5, 2017 for implementation functions are provided in B4N Visibility Fabric:

• Creation of network topology and display of its change in real time;
• Automatic search of the shortest way between a source and the receiver of traffic, pro-active preparation of reserve routes;
• Monitoring of a system
  • visualization of a current status of network in the form of physical and logical topology,
  • loading of communication lines,
  • operational notification on errors or critical condition of the equipment,
  • maintaining journal files about events and actions of users in a system;

• possibilities of traffic filtering on the basis of different criteria of compliance are fields of headings of the data link layer (outer/inner VLAN ID, VLAN PCP, etc.), fields of headings of L3-L4 levels;
• Balancing of traffic between end devices on the basis of Hash-methods using functionality of Select Groups in OpenFlow;
• Support of model of implementation of out-of-band;
• Ability to integrate with the adjacent systems by means of Northbound API (REST) or under the SNMP protocol;
• Support of different topology of mirroring is Any-to-Any, Many-to-One (TAPs and SPAN-ports), One-to-Many (separation of the entering traffic flow on several and sending different types of traffic to the relevant ports).

We observe serious interest from customers in the solutions for monitoring providing high scalability and performance even at cost reduction. Our solution, B4N Visibility Fabric, provides flexibility, increasing performance and reliability, in the organization of monitoring and control of security of applications for corporate data processing centers and cloud infrastructures. Thanks to advantages SDN/ NFV- approach, the solution provides decrease in capital and operating costs in comparison with the vertically integrated systems. Oleg Shchapov, CEO of Brain4Net

Specific Features

• Clear graphical interface
• Possibility of use of high-performance switches without binding to the specific producer
• Optimization of loading of security systems – is delivered only required traffic
• Traffic distribution, coming to one high-speed port, between several ports to which security systems are connected
• Aggregation of traffic from several ports 1GB or 10 GB in ports 10Gb and 40Gb for the maximum loading of security systems
• Replication of traffic on several ports

As a part of B4N Visibility Fabric support of switches on the basis of chipsets of Ezchip NP-5, architecture of x86 is provided.