NetScout Systems, Inc. announced the nGenius(R) 3900 series packet flow switch, a highly extensible chassis-based, data center-class network monitoring switch that expands upon NetScout's initial entry into the market with the nGenius 1500 series packet flow switch. The nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch enables scalable, highly available access to network traffic across distributed networks for use by the nGenius Service Assurance Solution or any network monitoring, performance management or security system. Based upon technology from the acquisition of ONPATH Technologies, the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch delivers market-leading advances in performance and capacity with the high 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) port densities per rack unit, and per chassis, with an architecture ready to support 100 GbE interfaces.

The nGenius 3900 series switch delivers intelligent traffic conditioning features on every port with sustained line rate performance and ultra-low latency. NetScout also announced availability of the nGenius PFS Management software, providing unified management and provisioning for the 3900 series switch that simplifies and automates manageability for large-scale, multi-location network monitoring deployments. With the continued high growth in complex service traffic flowing across enterprise, service provider and cloud-networks, the challenge of monitoring large, distributed IP service delivery networks continues to mount.

The proliferation of high-speed 10 GbE network links coupled with the increasing number of management and security devices that require access to packet-flow traffic is driving the need for a higher capacity, more flexible and automated network monitoring fabric to facilitate ubiquitous traffic access. To achieve pervasive visibility, organizations need a higher density, seamless monitoring fabric that can provide the scale, capacity and flexibility needed to efficiently manage the distribution of critical traffic flows for monitoring and security applications. Built from deployment-proven data center-class switching technology, the nGenius 3900 series packet flow switch combines the scale, intelligence, flexibility and availability needed to construct large-scale network monitoring fabrics.

The nGenius 3900 series switch is available in a one-, three- and 12-slot chassis. A common high-density interface module provides local switching and packet processing capabilities that can be seamlessly interchanged across the chassis series. Each module is powered by a 720 Gbps full-duplex switching engine (1.44 Tbps aggregate), and can scale to support from 16 to 576 ports of 10 GbE and up to 48 ports of 40 GbE in a single chassis.

Any port can be dynamically configured to support either incoming or outgoing traffic flows with layer 2/3/4 wire-speed intelligent packet filtering, port tagging and load balancing capabilities on every port at line rate, with no performance degradation or latency impact. The 12-slot chassis contains a 5.76 Tbps full-duplex switching fabric (11.5 Tbps aggregate), providing ample headroom to support future 100 GbE interfaces. Designed for mission-critical environments, the nGenius 3900 series switch offers a highly available redundant architecture with a fault tolerant switch fabric, non-stop switching across the chassis and stateful redundancy for the management system.