PRESS RELEASE: Solana Networks Adds BGP Support to its Route Analytics Network Diagnostic Products, Broadening Use to Largest Private Enterprise and ISP Networks

Network Appliance Now Lets Users View Entire IP Network at Once,
Displaying End-to-End Routing Paths Across Protocol Boundaries

Solana Networks has introduced an IP network diagnostic and troubleshooting appliance that provides full route path visibility to any network running the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) granting network administrators with far greater IP routing analysis and network management capabilities.

Along with OSPF and IS-IS, Solana Networks has now added BGP routing analysis support to its network diagnostics product suite – SmartHawk and FalconView. The BGP protocol acts as the ‘glue’ that ties together the sea of networks, which make up the internet and is used by the majority of ISPs and many large enterprises to exchange routing information between interconnected “autonomous systems”. BGP is also considered the most ‘talkative’ of the routing protocols and can generate enormous amounts of routing updates (possibly millions) after a connectivity modification or peering loss. This new support expands the power of FalconView’s Route Analytics capabilities to the vast number of networks that utilize the de-facto inter-domain routing protocol.

With Solana Networks new BGP support it is now possible for users to have a single and complete topology map of their entire network. Network administrators gain the ability to visualize the routing interaction between multiple domains which may be running various routing protocols. This is a considerable advantage over existing tools, which can typically only show topology maps for a single routing protocol. With the new BGP support, network problems that extend across “autonomous systems” which may be running a combination of OSPF, IS-IS and BGP can now be detected immediately by Solana’s appliance allowing for quick resolution.

Additionally, Solana Networks now offers two versions of its Route Analytics appliance; FalconView meets the needs of Small to Medium Businesses whilst SmartHawk is ideally suited to larger multi-domain enterprises and service providers.

Current BGP management techniques are costly and require in-depth knowledge

“Although ubiquitous”, said Nisan Rowhani, Solana Network’s vice president of product management, “BGP’s manageability has had limited improvement since it’s inception and diagnosing BGP routing instabilities is extremely time-consuming requiring in-depth knowledge by costly personnel”. “Moreover, detection of routing instabilities with BGP traditionally takes place after a problem has arisen,” Rowhani added “and awareness typically occurs as a result of customer complaints about poor network performance or the inability to reach certain sites.”

The problem is even more challenging when dealing with large-scale, meshed, multi-domain enterprise networks where the complex interactions of BGP with other IGPs (OSPF, IS-IS) have to be considered. “Since problems could affect performance across such diversified networks, spanning multiple protocols and domains, network administrators needed a tool that can provide a single topology map to work from rather than diagnosing each segment of the network separately and then trying to piece things together”, said Rowhani. “FalconView solves a real pain by providing in-depth visibility thereby greatly reducing problem resolution times and costs”, added Rowhani.

Additional features have also been incorporated into Solana’s diagnostic product suite to facilitate ease of use for the operators of these large networks, including: multiple user capability allowing administrators and engineers to simultaneously analyze and troubleshoot various portions of the network from any physical location; the ability to save and export user modified network topology views for future reference and telnet capability.

About Solana Networks

Solana Networks provides industry-leading software products and solutions for IP networks in Canada and internationally. Solana’s offerings are designed to improve the performance of mission-critical IP networks, reduce network downtime and enable new services. The company offers two intelligent IP network diagnostics products: FalconView aimed specifically at the small to medium business (SMB) and our flagship product SmartHawk targeted at the largest enterprise and ISP networks. Both products have unique capabilities for ensuring high network availability through rapid fault detection and root cause analysis. Leveraging an innovative technology called “Route Analytics” they provide detailed insight into IP network routing heath and various QoS issues.

For more information please visit www.solananetworks.com.