NPB Application Overview

The NPB application provides network packet broker functions to process and prepare packets for visibility tools. This allows core networking devices to offload network monitoring.

When the Extreme 9920 device running Extreme 9920 software is attached to optical taps between the core networking devices, a copy of the traffic is sent to the Extreme 9920 device for filtering the traffic of interest, formatting it, and sending it on to visibility tools.

The NPB application supports the following network packet broker functions:

• Link Aggregation: Aggregates traffic arriving from multiple ports and directs it to a single port or port-channel ("many to one").

  Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP): Enables devices to send Link Aggregation Control Protocol Data Units (LACPDUs) to each other and establish link aggregation connections.

• Replication: Replicates network traffic to multiple ports and port-channels ("one to many").
• Load balancing: Distributes network traffic among ports in a port-channel.
• ACL filtering: Directs network traffic based on Layer 2 to Layer 4 protocol headers.
• Route-map forwarding: Redirects packets based on Layer 2 to Layer 4 Protocol headers to the desired physical port or port-channel interfaces.
• Packet slicing: Truncates the packet to a specified length.
• Tunnel origination or encapsulation: Encapsulates packets with IPv4 Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) headers.
• Tunnel termination: Classifies and decapsulates incoming IPv4 and IPv6 packets.
• Encapsulation-header stripping:
  • Removes tags that are not supported by visibility applications.
  • Supports 802.1BR, VN-Tag, VLAN, VXLAN, GTPU, GRE, and IPIP headers.
• Quality of Service (QoS): Provides preferential treatment to specific traffic that is received on multiple ingress interfaces or Test Access Points (TAPs).
• Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP): Allows network devices to advertise their identity and capabilities to peer devices on a LAN and store information about the network.