SmartNA-X HD
Q&A: Interview with Alastair Hartrup, CEO, Network Critical
- It is great to speak with you. Let’s start off by telling us a little bit about Network Critical.
Of course, we have been a network access and monitoring solutions provider delivering real-time network visibility, monitoring and control to service providers, data centers, ecommerce, government and defense networks world-wide since 1997. We recently launched our SmartNA-X HD to help customers improve the performance of their network monitoring tools.
- Congratulations on the new product announcement, can you tell us a bit about the SmartNA-X HD?
SmartNA-X HD is the latest product within the SmartNA-X family and utilizes our Drag-n-Vu™ technology to deliver the industry’s easiest to use configuration system for network and monitoring visualization. The SmartNA-X HD is a high performance and high density 10 Gigabit focused aggregation and smart filtering device that directs the right traffic to the tools that optimize performance, allowing organizations to filter traffic based on IP addresses, protocols, ports and VLANS.
- So how does Smart-NA-X HD increase security?
By providing maximum visibly for monitoring and security tools, users can view all connected network links simultaneously which quickly delivers critical network data.
- What are some of the new features that we should look out for on Smart-NA-X HD?
The focus of the SmartNA-X-HD is to deliver operational simplicity and software flexibility. Customers can start with a baseline aggregation platform and then, by purchasing software licensing keys, can upgrade to include filtering capabilities and ultimately a fully featured platform that includes load balancing, header stripping and other advanced features that may be developed. Combined with our Drag-n-Vu technology that enables rapid configuration of traffic maps and filter set ups, in addition to the ability to have single pane management across multiple devices, operators can seamlessly configure rules for passing traffic between ports in a matter of seconds.
- When will Smart-NA-X HD be available?
Smart-NA-X HD is currently available and was launched on November 25, 2013.
- Finally, can you tell us what we can expect from Network Critical going into the new year?
We have seen explosive growth in the security and monitoring space over the last few years, and expect it to continue with the rapid emergence of cloud computing and other industry trends that are driving the requirement for network access solutions. Traditional products employ user interfaces that require the operator to decipher complex hierarchical filter rules and manually apply them to ensure traffic ends up in the right place. This can be very time consuming and often prone to error. Since our software uses proprietary algorithms to internally allocate traffic, we see a continual adoption so that operators aren’t required to spend endless resources focusing on network traffic.
Our focus has always been on simplicity, flexibility and value. We will continue to build products that deliver hardware flexibility through a modular approach and software flexibility through products that can be upgraded from a baseline aggregation platform to a fully featured network packet broker. These platforms will continue to be offered at very aggressive price points
