Network Classification (NAVL)

Network Application Visibility Layer

Accuracy and scalability for the enterprise gateway environment.

Designed for Enterprise

Vineyard Networks' network classification library (NAVL) focuses on the scalability and accuracy requirements of enterprise gateway appliances and applications.  Most classification engines are designed and built for service provider requirements, focusing on extreme network throughput (10Gbps +) and high bandwidth applications found in the service provider environment (Peer2Peer, File Sharing, Streaming).  This forces these engines to use simple classification methods such as regular expression matching and port based classification so they can leverage network processors and other specialized high speed platforms.  While these engines are great at helping service providers monitor and manage backbone traffic in public environments, the requirements for enterprise classification for security, routing, and networking are very different.

Enterprises require high accuracy at speeds typically under 10Gbps.  Most networking appliances do not feature specialized network processors and leverage the flexibility and software support of x86 based processing platforms.  The team at Vineyard Networks has been designing and building the industry's leading enterprise classification engines for over 15 years and understands the requirements and has the solutions you need for your enterprise solution.

The Technology

Everyone loves the term Deep Packet Inspection, but how deep do they really go?  As we mentioned above, most service provider based solutions are Regex based.  This is easy to get around by fragmenting packets, encrypting data, and tunnelling through other protocols.  Vineyard Networks has pioneered the concept of Deep Flow Inspection and Cross Flow Inspection.  What does this mean?  We reassemble the flow in real time and search for both data and behavioural patterns in the flow.  In addition to this, we can also string together multiple flows into a single session to accurately classify applications that use many small flows for communication like Supernode based applications such as LimeWire, Torrents, and Skype.  Even cooler, we can predict what traffic and flows to expect based on what we've seen in the past.  This helps our scalability and resource requirements by accurately estimating traffic very quickly and then validating it with our deep flow inspection techniques.

How long is your LIST

Most vendors love to talk about how long their LIST is.  We classify X applications!  While a long list of supported applications is important, a better question is: How well do you classify the applications that are actually on the network?  At Vineyard Networks we're focused on the accurate classification of applications found on the Enterprise network.  Sure, we've got a long list of protocols and applications (see it here), but more importantly our system accurately classifies the traffic you need to see like Skype, Google Apps, VoIP, and hundreds of today's (and tomorrow's) common Web applications and services.

Easy Integration

Finally, none of this matters if you can't integrate it into your platform.  We offer standard integration into Linux based platforms through hooks like the libpcap interface or netfilter.  Our low processor and memory requirements make it easy to deploy on the smallest gateway appliances all the way up to multi-core, multi-processor core data center equipment.  Your system is always up to date with a steady stream of network and application signature plug-ins that can be added at run time.  By sharing the cost of signature research and development across our OEM customers, you can focus on your core product platforms and have a cost effective, industry leading L7 network classification engine as well.

Give us a call

Want to learn more about our solutions and services?  Don't hesitate to give us a call at 250-448-1925 x 1001 at any time or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  We think you should try it out and see for yourself why Vineyard Networks has a great solution and makes a beneficial technology partner for your organization.

Some Details

• Wire speed to 10Gbps on X86 based platforms
• Protocol stack ID (/IP/TCP/HTTP/Facebook/FacebookApps/MafiaWars)
• Zero copy packet and flow interface minimizes processor and memory requirements (1k per active flow)
• Symmetric and asymmetric traffic support
• Runtime addition of signatures and plug-ins
• Macro cross matrix quantum flux capacitor flow support (okay, we made that up but it sounds cool)