Implementation criteria for traffic capture devices are generally straightforward. One that's not is how the device handles gigabit failover on copper media. Network engineers designing a traffic capture system should ensure that the device will fail over quickly enough, typically less than 100 milliseconds, so as not to cause link loss.

Traffic capture devices are typically set and forgotten. But if you think that yours may one day be redeployed, look for maximum flexibility, such as configurable I/O ports, inline as well as SPAN capture, and the ability to download firmware delivering additional functionality. Further, the system should allow the addition of capture points and analytics interfaces as needed.

The key to effective monitoring is being able to scale a growing number of analytics systems across a growing number of capture points. The emergence of today's traffic capture devices with onboard intelligence for complex traffic grooming allows their deployment as a system for total monitoring and security coverage, while at the same time reducing deployment costs and achieving a higher ROI for the analytics tools of choice.

Monitoring professionals are awakening to a new era where the old paradigm of rigid cost-laden architectures has given way to a layered and scalable system of total visibility and hardware driven efficiency.

Breslin is CEO and founder of VSS Monitoring ().