This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) promise numerous benefits, but adding layers of network abstraction come at a cost: visibility into the traffic traversing the links at the physical layer.

The migration to ever-faster networks is compounding this challenge because virtually no network monitoring, management or security tool today is capable of operating at 40Gbps or 100Gbps. Network packet brokers (NPBs), also known as network visibility controllers, address this challenge by capturing, filtering, aggregating and optimizing traffic. This enables 1Gbps and 10Gbps performance management and security systems to operate in 40/100Gbps networks.

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