Network probes spot malware and misuse

Firms wanting to monitor their network continuously to stop malware and to prevent staff from hogging capacity - by stopping peer-to-peer applications, for example - gained another option when network and application management vendor NetScout released its High Definition Performance Management (HDPM) technology.

HDPM is incorporated in version 3.0 of NetScout's nGenius

Performance Manager and the associated nGenius Probe firmware release for NetScout's turnkey appliances. HDPM is designed to let companies take network performance data more frequently, and monitor applications and threats that use minimal bandwidth.

Jim Frey, NetScout vice-president of marketing, said that attacks on networks might only use a minute percentage of the total bandwidth, so firms have to monitor network users and usage more closely. "You need to go from storing data about the most active applications to taking data from all network transactions," he added.

NetScout has dedicated probes for 10/100, Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks, and its HDPM technology can give one-minute rolling averages for network utilisation classified by URL and sub-URL. The system also gives network administrators the ability to classify Citrix and voice over IP (VoIP) applications through user names.

HDPM can also simultaneously check network traffic quality of service (QoS) for virtual LANs (VLANs), data link connection identifiers (DLCIs) and private virtual circuits. Wide area network bandwidth can also be monitored for peer-to-peer applications such as Kazaa, Shareaza, Morpheus, BearShare, LimeWire, eDonkey, eMule and iMesh, to stop them slowing the performance of critical business applications.

All the HDPM-enabled version 3.0 products are available now.

For existing NetScout customers, the upgrade to version 3.0 is at no extra cost. For new customers, the price is around £27,000 + VAT.