Network Packet Brokers

“Scalable traffic intelligence powered by CPU, silicon, and FPGA processing.”

 What are Keysight Network Packet Brokers?

The Keysight Vision Series Network Packet Brokers form a complete portfolio of appliances designed to aggregate, filter, optimize, and distribute network traffic to monitoring and security tools.

The range extends from compact 1G/10G platforms like Vision U1S and E10S to high-capacity datacenter appliances such as the E400S, E400P, and Vision X.

Keysight’s NPBs are engineered with CPU-based packet processing for flexible traffic manipulation, and silicon/FPGA acceleration for high-speed, line-rate performance at 40G, 100G, and beyond. This combination provides unparalleled scalability and processing capacity in modern datacenter and service provider networks.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Platform Range
  • Vision U1S, E10S, E40, E50: compact, cost-effective aggregation and filtering appliances.
  • Vision E100, 7816: mid-range, scalable visibility nodes.
  • E400S, E400P: high-performance packet brokers with FPGA acceleration for terabit-class throughput.
  • Vision One, 400, Vision X: advanced platforms with full-stack visibility for enterprise and service providers.
• High-Performance Processing
  • CPU processing: flexibility for complex filtering, packet manipulation, and metadata enrichment.
  • Silicon/FPGA acceleration: deterministic, line-rate performance for high-throughput environments, even with complex rules.
  • Combination of both ensures scale + intelligence, without performance bottlenecks.
• Advanced Traffic Intelligence (Visibility Stacks)
  Keysight Vision NPBs support multiple software stacks that extend traffic intelligence far beyond simple aggregation:
  • NetStack – Base functionality: aggregation, load balancing, traffic replication, and filtering.
  • PacketStack – Packet manipulation features: de-duplication, packet slicing, header stripping, time stamping.
  • PacketStack+ – Enhanced packet processing: more advanced header removal, user-defined slicing, advanced normalization.
  • FlowStack – Generates NetFlow/IPFIX flow records from raw traffic, providing flow-based visibility without dedicated collectors.
  • SecureStack – SSL/TLS decryption (inline and out-of-band), security policy enforcement, and secure tunneling.
  • AppStack – Application-level visibility and metadata generation (HTTP, DNS, SSL certs, SaaS, etc.), enabling deep observability.
  • TradeStack – Specialized for financial trading networks, providing nanosecond-level timestamping and monitoring of latency-sensitive flows.
  • MobileStack – Visibility for mobile core networks (GTP, LTE, 4G/5G traffic). Supports session correlation, decapsulation, and filtering of mobile signaling and user plane.
  • MobileStack+ – Advanced mobile visibility: includes subscriber-aware filtering, per-user traffic extraction, and advanced 5G observability features.

Benefits for the Client

• Full visibility fabric: from enterprise edge to carrier-grade core, one consistent platform.
• High-speed performance: FPGA acceleration guarantees line-rate processing at 100G+.
• Optimize monitoring & security tools: offload heavy processing (de-duplication, decryption, flow generation) from tools.
• Stronger security posture: deliver decrypted, filtered, and enriched traffic to IDS/IPS, SIEM, and NDR.
• Future-proof: support for 400G and 5G traffic, hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.

Why Keysight NPBs are Different ?

• Dual processing approach: CPU for flexibility, FPGA/silicon for massive throughput.
• Full stack visibility: modular stacks (NetStack → AppStack → MobileStack) cover every use case.
• Specialized stacks: TradeStack for financials, MobileStack for telecom — highly differentiated in the industry.
• Carrier-grade reliability: designed for the largest service provider and financial trading networks.
• Tight integration: works seamlessly with Keysight TAPs, Vision Edge OS, and test/validation tools.

Typical Use Cases

• Aggregate traffic from multiple TAPs and deliver optimized streams to monitoring tools.
• Provide flow records to SIEM or analytics via FlowStack.
• Enable SSL decryption for inline and out-of-band NDR/IDS via SecureStack.
• Deliver application metadata to observability platforms with AppStack.
• Monitor financial trading latency with nanosecond precision via TradeStack.
• Gain visibility into 5G core traffic with MobileStack and MobileStack+.

Services & Support (What We Offer)

• Visibility Architecture Assessment – identify blind spots and design NPB deployments.
• Deployment & Integration – install and tune Vision Series appliances.
• Stack Enablement – activate and configure the right visibility stacks for client use cases.
• Advanced Workshops – SSL/TLS key management, flow analytics, mobile visibility.
• Managed Services – co-sourced operation of Keysight visibility fabrics.