In a recent interview, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Carlos Salas, Head of Platform Engineering at NordLayer on the impact of traffic visibility on modern IP networks. Carlos joins us in a series of discussions with leading networking, analytics and cybersecurity companies, assessing the need for traffic filtering technologies that can deliver real-time, granular application awareness. The series explores how advanced analytics power various network functions amidst the rapid growth in traffic and applications.
Ariana: What are your views on open-source software for delivering visibility?
Carlos: If your organization already has an in-house low-level development team, open-source software of any kind can be modified and expanded to fulfill any needs from either inside your organization or client-facing services that you might provide to your clients. This is something that is unlikely to be found in commercial software.
Ariana: What is your take on open-source DPI?
Carlos: It is important to take into account that with any open-source project, you need specialists that are trained and able to manage and maintain the aforementioned projects. In the case of open-source DPI, your specialists would need to be experts on multiple fields such as networking, low-level development (C/C++ or similar) and cybersecurity. If all those pre-requisites are fulfilled, an open-source DPI project can be expanded and modified to fulfill basically any requirements that your organization has. On the other hand, if you lack the expertise to be able to manage these complex solutions, it would be advisable to opt-out from using any open source projects until you procure such talents.
Carlos Salas is Head of Platform Engineering at NordLayer.
This interview is a part of The Fast Mode's Traffic Visibility segment, featuring leading networking, analytics and cybersecurity companies and their views on the importance of network intelligence and DPI for today's IP networks. A research report on this topic will be published in June 2024 - for more information, visit here.
