Learn the Secret of Building a Dynamic, Responsive Network Access Architecture Today’s networking landscape is growing so fast that the most expansive predictions risk underestimating the phenomenon. Both the extent and rate of growth are breathtaking—and that could seem like a trickle compared to what’s in store. This deluge is the result of rising video and all-IP traffic volumes, rapid migration to the cloud, and momentum toward 100 GbE and 4G LTE, all accelerated by the insatiable appetite for tablets and smartphones.

1. The Secret to
Surviving the
Network Deluge
Building a Dynamic, Responsive
Access Architecture
Bob Shaw, President and CEO, Net Optics, Inc.

2. About the Author
Bob Shaw, President and CEO, Net Optics, Inc.
As President and Chief Executive Officer of Net Optics since 2001, Bob Shaw is responsible
for conceiving and implementing corporate vision and strategy, positioning Net Optics as
the leading provider of intelligent access and monitoring architecture solutions in both
the physical and virtual environments. Under Shaw’s guidance, Net Optics has achieved
consistent double-digit growth, launched more than 35 new products, acquired over
8000 customers, and expanded its global presence in over 81 countries. The company
is included in the elite Inc. 5000 list of highest performing companies for the second
year in a row and won 2011 Best of FOSE honors. In addition, Net Optics received the
coveted 2011 Red Herring Top 100 North America and Top 100 Global Awards for promise
and innovation, the 2011 Best Deployment Scenario Award for Network Visibility, and
many other accolades. Shaw’s leadership experience spans startups to Fortune 200
organizations, where he held Senior Vice Presidential executive positions. Shaw earned
both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics
from Geneva College in Pennsylvania.
Net Optics is a registered trademark of Net Optics, Inc. Additional company and product
names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are
respectfully acknowledged. Copyright 1996-2013 Net Optics, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. The Secret to Surviving
the Network Deluge
Building a Dynamic, Responsive
Access Architecture
Today’s networking landscape is growing so fast that the most expansive
predictions risk underestimating the phenomenon. Both the extent and rate
of growth are breathtaking—and that could seem like a trickle compared
to what’s in store. This deluge is the result of rising video and all-IP traffic
volumes, rapid migration to the cloud, and momentum toward 100 GbE and
4G LTE, all accelerated by the insatiable appetite for tablets and smartphones.
A few facts underscoring our drive to communicate:
• Today, four billion devices are connected to the internet, including
computers, phones, TVs—and even refrigerators! By 2015, this number will
climb to 15 billion addressable devices, each creating its own usage data. 1
• Globally, cloud traffic will grow from just 11 percent of total data center
traffic in 2010 to 34 percent by 2015. 2
• Cisco expects traffic to continue growing by an average of 92 percent in
each of the next five years! 3
• Global data traffic rose more than 60 percent in 2010, driven by
smartphones and 4G LTE network rollouts—a trend expected to continue. 4
• Revenue from U.S. wireless data growth alone will climb from $54 billion
in 2010 to $107 billion in 2014, when it will generate more revenue than
wireless voice. 5
The Beating of Many, Many Wings
As the Angry Birds app flaps past half a billion downloads, the flock is
delivering a myriad of lessons and insights. Unfortunately, some of these
are learned after the fact—the most uncomfortable type of instruction. For
example, service providers were recently blindsided by sudden, alarmingly
massive spikes in 3G traffic. They did not know the source—and worse, didn’t
know where to look for it. Angry Birds, which usually claimed a manageable
eight percent of bandwidth, was now nesting on 352 percent! The spike was
triggering millions of simultaneous downloads, increasing volume by ten
times in just a day or two.
1

4. Even as engineers sifted through the traffic, the culprit was hiding in plain view: the
spike had emanated not from data but from signaling driven by in-app advertising.
Ads delivered at each new level of Angry Birds tripled signaling traffic on Android
phones. Better visibility would have enabled engineers to pinpoint the source of the
spike at a glance. Instead, they had searched in the wrong direction for something that
did not exist. This situation illustrates the consequences of poor visibility: wasted time,
effort and money plus an ongoing, deepening crisis.
The lesson here is not that an ostensibly benign application can suddenly rear up into
a business monster. Unpredictability of that sort is predictable. The larger truth is that
without visibility, one can’t even begin to define—let alone control—network issues,
whether routine or sudden. Nobody wants to be battered by network turbulence, but
given the rate of its growth, by the time we comprehend a situation and take action,
the crisis or need may well have moved on already and the situation changed—likely
for the worse. As bandwidth-hungry applications stress networks still further, the need
for visibility, now and going forward, is urgent and inarguable.
Signaling generated by playing Angry Birds
Number of signals sent
2500
352%
increase
2000
Angry Birds on Android
Advertising with each new game level
1500
1000
500
8%
increase
Smartphone baseline
No Advertising
Angry Birds on iPhone
No Advertising
0
Overall, the Angry Birds application itself creates
manageable amounts of network and data traffic.
But ads delivered with each new Angry Birds level
tripled signaling traffic on Android phones.
Visibility Makes an Ally of Change
Figure 1 – Signaling Diagram
Statistics on network growth are just a deluge of numbers. In the real world, we
cannot afford to let the speed and volume of change outpace our ability to handle
its challenges. It may seem like a sort of alchemy to be able to take statistics, turn
them into business plans and proceed from there into real-world implementations.
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The Secret to Surviving the Network Deluge

5. But I believe that not only can we cope with rapid growth and change, we can actually
make them work for us. We can use these statistics and insights to develop a responsive
network architecture that is flexible, visible, reliable, scalable and future-aware; that
incorporates the highest levels of security while keeping costs under control.
Building a Responsive Architecture Across Industries
As the pace of global economic activity accelerates, the network is more than ever the
key to a company’s agility, productivity and competitive success. Organizations rely
on the network to meet business challenges as never before. The question is, what
capabilities do they need most urgently?
The answer may vary according to industry, but some needs, such as that for
regulatory compliance, cut across all industries. Financial enterprises are eager to
lower latency and raise availability as they handle huge transaction volumes in near
real-time. They must also be able to capture and record certain types of data and
retrieve that information instantly for compliance and auditing. And of course, in a
split-second, highly competitive environment, security is business-critical.
Protocol
Analyzer
Performance
Monitor
Performance
Monitor
Performance
Monitor
Monitoring Tools
Net Optics Director®
Net Optics Director®
Net Optics Director®
Access
INTERNET
VLAN 1
VLAN 2 VLAN 3
First Floor
VLAN 1 VLAN 2 VLAN 3
Second Floor
VLAN 1
VLAN 2 VLAN 3
Third Floor Switching
Financial Enterprise: Passive Access and Management of Network Traffic Monitoring
Net Optics Director™ data monitoring switches enable visibility and centralize monitoring
management along with inline network Taps to pass all of the link traffic—even packets
with CRC errors—to the monitoring tool.
Figure 2 – Financial
Service Providers are challenged to meet the demands of growth: a telco moving
from 3G to 4G and LTE amid tight competition and relentless demand for online video
and social media needs a flexible, robust architecture to fulfill SLAs, anticipate and
prevent negative service levels, build loyalty and market share, and stay ahead of
arising trends. With wireless data and broadband growth placing huge pressures on
the network and the hunger for connectivity unabated, global telecom spending for
equipment and services will rise from $4.34 trillion this year to $5.31 trillion in 2014. 6
3

6. Protocol
Analyzer
Traffic
Recorder
Billing
QoS
Performance
Monitor
Lawful
Intercept
Monitoring Tools
Net Optics Director®
Access
INTERNET
PSTN
Switching
Service Provider: Monitor High-Volume Traffic In a Network Scaling to 4G
Tap the traffic between SGSNs and GGSNs using Director data monitoring switches. Aggregate
traffic from multiple 10 gigabit links for flexible monitoring coverage. Smart Filtering™ appliances
direct traffic of interest to monitoring tools.
Figure 3 – Service Provider
Healthcare organizations are concerned about complying with HIPAA and other
regulations while maintaining control and confidentiality of patient records. They need
the ability to implement telemedicine applications and to administer large distributed
organizations. Government agencies for their part battle rising security threats and the
need to handle growing public responsibilities and demands with shrinking budgets.
Response Time
Monitor
Database
Monitor
Web Application
Monitor
Network
Analyzer
Network
Forensics
Monitoring Tools
Net Optics Director®
Access
Lab, Web and Email Servers
INTERNET
Medical Record File Servers
Edge
Core
Department Subnetworks
Switching
Healthcare Company: Streamline Infrastructure and Solve Database Monitoring
and Network Disruption Issues
Deploy Net Optics Director data monitoring switch in a new infrastructure; provide
non-intrusive aggregation, regeneration, and filtering of traffic, allowing monitoring tools
to operate at peak performance.
Figure 4 – Healthcare
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The Secret to Surviving the Network Deluge

7. Products and Solutions:
A Jurassic Approach to Scaling
I use the term Jurassic to emphasize how quickly once-standard approaches to growth
can become fossilized. Certainly, the strategy of dealing with change by means of
products has had its day. IBM says of Big Data that ninety percent of all data in the
world today was created in the last two years alone!7 That volume of growth demands
a new paradigm in network scaling. No matter how sophisticated your devices are, or
how many of them you push into your infrastructure, they are not going to help you
master the demands of growth. A solutions perspective is now becoming similarly
outmoded. Once the most expansive way to conceptualize network growth, the
solutions of today are no longer a resource for scaling to the levels anticipated by
2020. In a sense they are are no longer instruments but increments. And networks
have grown beyond incremental product- and solution-based thinking.
Core Data Center
Remote
Network
Intelligence
Compliance
Virtual
Net Optics
Access
Architecture
Performance
Security
Lawful
Intercept
Figure 5 – Dynamic Access Architecture
Reaching New Horizons:
Toward a Dynamic Access Architecture
We at Net Optics envision a seamless, end-to-end Access and Monitoring Architecture
that delivers total visibility and transcends the physical/virtual concept to enable
robust and responsive security, accelerated performance, low latency and streamlined
manageability. This new architecture delivers a keener focus on applications and
enriches access capabilities from corporate headquarters across the distributed
organization. Flexibility and responsiveness to change must be built into the fabric
of the access infrastructure.
This flexible, open, standards-based and cost-efficient architecture grows without
compromising performance or adding complexity. It maintains high applications
availability and minimizes latency, while providing ample capacity and throughput
to deal with rising traffic without wasting capacity. The new architecture is also
environmentally aware, with a compact equipment footprint and reduced energy
consumption. Manageability is key in lowering OpEx; administrative tasks are
simplified and visible across the entire distributed organization.
5

8. Total Visibility—the Key to Security
Security touches every aspect of the business landscape, so our architecture addresses
security in every aspect as well, especially in shared environments. With new attackers
alert to any vulnerability, the importance of total visibility cannot be overstated. In
order to perform vital inspection, analysis and compliance activities, and to assess
performance, traffic must be visible to the most sophisticated, network-based security
devices at the instrumentation layer.
Visibility That Supports Evolution
The cloud and virtualization are still new terrain, and companies remain wary
regarding security and availability issues. Surrendering control—even at the promise
of great benefits—demands confidence in the vendor. To reap the benefits of cloud
computing and avoid its pitfalls, organizations need granular, end-to-end visibility for
security, access control and separation of duties.
Net Optics is delivering the visibility that companies need to thrive in the cloud, as well
as to realize the financial and efficiency potential of virtualization. We want customers
to operate with confidence, to gain the control they need to meet the coming
challenges, and to reap the benefits of progress in their networks.
Our virtualization vision opens new avenues of productivity, cost-efficiency, and
environmental relief for our customers while securing applications and data. Our
Dynamic Access and Monitoring Architecture provides total visibility to bridge the
physical and virtual networks, so that a customer can rely on comparable levels of
performance on both.
The Net Optics architecture also takes advantage of server virtualization and the
mobility of VMs to streamline the transport of raw traffic to the instrumentation layer
for peak monitoring efficiency. By implementing sophisticated tactics such as load
balancing, we assure uninterrupted visibility for monitoring and security plus quick
issue detection and resolution of power and equipment failure, without financial loss
or impact on network productivity. The network smoothly manages even complex
device implementations, enforcement of security policies, secure onboarding of new
users, and monitoring of distributed sites.
Visibility is the way that a company comprehends its network: how its applications
and security instruments are performing and using the network; how secure they
are and how they can proactively resolve fast-arising issues. Total visibility is vital to
network integrity because if shared applications and resources are compromised, the
impact falls on countless applications and users. Only with an Access and Monitoring
Architecture that provides total visibility to monitor both the physical and virtual
arenas can a company realize virtualization’s many benefits. And only with total
visibility can a company handle the challenges of unstoppable growth while seizing
opportunities to benefit from that growth.
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The Secret to Surviving the Network Deluge

9. Notes
1. http://blog.sociocast.com/2011/10/
2. Cisco® Global Cloud Index (2010 – 2015) http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/
collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns1175/Cloud_Index_White_Paper.html
3. http://coreanalysis1.blogspot.com/2011/07/bbtm-part-4tim-bittorrent.html
4. http://searchtelecom.techtarget.com/feature/
TIA-deems-2011-a-good-year-for-telecom-market-growth
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. http://blog.sociocast.com/2011/10/
References
“Evaluating the Growth of Internet Traffic”
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111109_evaluating_the_growth_of_internet_traffic/
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast update 2010-2015
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/
white_paper_c11-520862.html
Cisco: “The Need for Speed! 40GbE & 100 GbE”
http://www.stc.suny.edu/media/presentations/2011/the_need_for_speed.pdf
“Content and Network Security See Strong Growth”
http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Security/Content-and-Network-Security-See-Strong-Growth-169174/
“TIA deems 2011 a good year for telecom market growth”
http://searchtelecom.techtarget.com/feature/TIA-deems-2011-a-good-year-for-telecom-market-growth
“Predicting Cloud Computing Adoption Rates”
http://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2011/07/24/predicting-cloud-computing-adoption-rates/
“Cloud Computing Security for DoD / Governments (U.S.)”
http://scap.nist.gov/events/2011/itsac/presentations/day3/Mauro%20-%20Cloud%20Computing%20Security%20for%20DoD%20and%20Governments%20(U.S.).pdf

10. Net Optics, Inc.
5303 Betsy Ross Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
(408) 737-7777
twitter.com/netoptics
www.netoptics.com
The Secret to Surviving the Network Deluge