AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Packet Design has released the Explorer Suite version 17.3 with advanced BGP performance analytics to help service providers deliver higher quality services, decrease transit costs, and mitigate security threats. Via its unique ability to correlate internal and external BGP traffic and routing with performance, the new version will enable service providers to make more informed BGP peering decisions and improve troubleshooting.
BGP peering is complex. For example, when running out of transit capacity, a service provider must decide whether it should upgrade the capacity of the existing links, add a new link at another location to the same provider, or peer with a completely new provider. Many operators do not have the right data to make good choices.
As a result, often service providers pay too much for transit costs and have ongoing connectivity or performance issues. In addition, according to Packet Design customers, 20 percent of traffic is missed completely. For instance, peering partners are using their networks in unexpected ways, they don’t know where their traffic is transiting, and their networks are being used surreptitiously for route hijackings.
“Service providers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these peering relationships, but there are huge opportunities for improvement that have not been tapped because they lacked the tools,” said Matt Sherrod, vice president of products for Packet Design. “With this new version of the Explorer Suite, we are making it much easier for service providers to choose the best BGP peering relationships for them from a cost and performance standpoint.”
To facilitate better BGP peering and troubleshooting decisions, the Explorer Suite version 17.3 provides comprehensive visibility into BGP traffic flows and links them to performance and latency measurements per service. Engineers and planners can see real-time and historical views of BGP traffic volume for each peer, the type of traffic, its source and destination, the ingress and egress points, and the transit networks it traversed.
A new visualization highlights when and where traffic is changing patterns. The suite will alert service providers when traffic is moving outside of normal peering partners. For example, service providers can immediately see and understand the impact of someone using BGP on their networks to hijack routes.
In addition, the Explorer Suite will suggest “top opportunities” to reduce transit costs, such as private peering. Service providers can also optimize peering for certain services.
Real-time operational monitoring and back-in-time forensic analysis help operators troubleshoot and manage service delivery proactively. Modeling capabilities enable engineers to accurately predict how proposed peering changes will affect routing and traffic to decrease the chances of design errors or misconfigurations.
The Explorer Suite version 17.3 is available now. For more information, visit https://www.packetdesign.com/products/explorer-suite/.
Additional Resources:
- Demo Video: Analyzing BGP Peering Relationships Using Packet Design Explorer Suite
- Blog Post: Explorer Suite Version 17.3 with BGP Peering Analysis and More
- White Paper: Understanding and Optimizing BGP Peering Relationships
About the Packet Design Explorer Suite
The Explorer network service assurance suite fills a key management gap in IP/MPLS networks. Only the Explorer products uniquely correlate always-current routing and path behavior with traffic flows and network infrastructure performance to reveal how routing events and failures affect service delivery. The Explorer Suite is also engineered for SDN, providing powerful analytics and automation capabilities to accelerate the transition to self-healing, self-optimizing networks.
About Packet Design
Packet Design technology is used in the world’s largest and most complex networks to improve network availability and performance, mitigate the risk from change, and enhance customer satisfaction. Its real-time telemetry and analytics are now powering intelligent automation by SDN controllers and service orchestrators in multi-layer, multi-vendor ecosystems. Packet Design customers deliver differentiated services faster and more economically, run their networks hotter with greater resiliency, and achieve first-mover competitive advantages. Visit www.packetdesign.com for more information.
