Branch Office Visibility

The Power of Packet Capture 

Organizations of all types must provide reliable and secure network access for increasingly dispersed employees and customers. Small and medium-sized branch offices rely on vital Internet and VPN connectivity, VoIP, and cloud-based services. The rapid pace of expansion, combined with new technology and services rollouts, can easily outpace the capacity of IT teams, while the available tools and telemetry frequently fail to provide adequate visibility into performance and security.  

Packet capture fills this void, with the resolution needed to accurately troubleshoot and diagnose network issues, optimize performance, and generate end-user experience (EUE) scores for every branch, even every conversation. Packet captures are also a go-to resource for back-in-time anomaly investigation. By tailoring the form factor and capabilities of the industry-leading GigaStor packet capture appliance to branch applications, VIAVI has established a versatile and cost-effective option that brings the power of packet capture to remote sites.    

How VIAVI Enables Branch Packet Capture  

The WAN edge devices found in small remote networks were not designed to handle the demands of on-going packet capture or NetFlow monitoring. A dedicated branch appliance allows WAN edge devices to focus on network connectivity, traffic management, and security functions.  

A branch-optimized packet capture solution also saves time and money by significantly reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) for network issues, improves vendor accountability by proving problem ownership, and reduces risk by providing forensic capabilities to investigate suspicious or malicious behavior.  

The GigaStor Branch appliance delivers a 2Gbps capture rate and 8TB of storage capacity from a compact 1U enclosure. NetOps and SecOps teams benefit from this latest GigaStor offering through: 

• Enhanced Visibility: Network administrators and engineers gain end-to-end network insight into on-premises, cloud, and hybrid applications for faster debugging and meaningful end-user experience management. 
• Unified Service Management: The GigaStor Branch provides analysis capabilities for both Application and Unified Communications traffic, relaying performance information to the operations teams for monitoring and troubleshooting. 
• In-depth Forensics: Security teams now have packet-level visibility into traffic within the branch, traffic between branch office and other corporate locations, and traffic going directly to and from the Internet. Packets remain the ultimate source of truth and court-admissible evidence when breaches occur. 

Observability Solutions from VIAVI  

Backed by decades of collaboration with network administrators, operations teams, and network security experts, VIAVI has now extended the visibility and security of packet capture from centralized data centers and distant cloud locations all the way to remote network branches. 

• Observer GigaStor - Purpose-built appliances and software: 
  Enable end-user experience scoring with the industry's best packet capture, analysis, and storage solution - empowering IT teams with in-depth network conversation details for troubleshooting, performance optimization, and security investigations. 
• Observer GigaFlow - More than just flow:  
  Flow data provides visibility into all traffic traveling in and out of branch locations. Who is talking to whom? How is bandwidth being consumed? Is traffic being prioritized correctly? GigaFlow takes basic flow to the next level by mapping usernames to IP addresses, providing network and port address translations and much more.  
• Observer Apex - Comprehensive end-user experience management: 
  The seamless integration of packet, metadata, and enriched flow, combined with the VIAVI Observer patented End-User Experience Scoring and Domain Isolation provides IT and Operations teams with data center-like visibility all the way out to branch office locations. When performance issues are encountered, Observer Apex provides the duration, scope, and severity visibility needed to understand business impact.