Accelerate into the Data Fast Lane Using Axellio’s XpressWay

March 27, 2025 at 02:07 AM EDT

Originally Posted On: https://blog.axellio.com/accelerate-into-the-data-fast-lane-using-axellios-xpressway

Accelerate into the Data Fast Lane Using Axellio’s XpressWay

Monitoring and data analysis teams have been moving closer to a crisis point for more than five years now. Data streams for these teams have dramatically increased from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps and are even pushing 100 Gbps now. The sheer amount of data that has to be analyzed has also increased over the last five years as enterprise networks have moved towards 400 Gbps backbone networks to accommodate all the network traffic. Military data streams are also dramatically increasing with the use of drone video, signal intelligence operations/counter operations, and a focus on US military joint team operations from mud to sky. At the same time, security and analysis tool data rates have been slow to keep pace with network data rates while those same tool prices have remained steady or increased.

These conditions have caused some enterprise IT teams to hit their data analysis wall. The higher data rates and higher data volume requirements are having noticeable impacts, like making monitoring tools slow to a crawl, creating buffer overloads that result in dropped packets, troubleshooting efforts that now take more time, and much longer times to locate and analyze stored data. Since IT can’t analyze the data to create actionable information in a reasonable amount of time, some IT teams have completely stopped monitoring activities. Other teams are on the brink of failure.

The data overload problem is not just limited to packet data. All types of time series data streams are increasing and overloading analysis tools. For instance, military and intelligence community teams are suffering with sensor overload, RF data path overload, and slow data analysis activities.

Failure, however, is not an answer. For the enterprise, lack of monitoring insight will allow security threats to infiltrate your network. In addition, “64% for enterprises rely on real-time data analytics to make nearly all or most of their strategic decisions,” according to a 2023 S&P Global Market Intelligence Report. Real-time data is also important to military teams. Lack of timely information means that they will either end up missing adversarial threats or good actionable intelligence will arrive so late that it’s worthless.

The answer for both teams is that you need to control your data, instead of letting it control you. So, how do you go about this? There are three key factors you need to address:

First, instead of simply trying to upgrade old monitoring and analysis tools, you need to adopt a paradigm shift and focus on an architecture that is not only usable now, but just as usable in the future.

Second, controlling your data so that it can be turned into actionable information is mandatory. This means that functions like aggregation, filtering, buffering, searching, playback and distribution to analysis tools must be supported at speed.

Finally, your data monitoring solution must be able to handle current and future high speed data analytics.

Let’s look at these three concepts and how Axellio’s solution helps. Implementing the right architecture is the most important, fundamental step. In an era where Big Data is now the norm, you need a data analysis architecture that’s built from the ground up to support high data rates and high-volume requirements. This means installing a software-based platform that can ingest and manipulate that data at full line speed. The architecture also needs to be powerful, flexible, and cost effective.

This is where Axellio’s Xpress Platform^TM comes into play. It’s a software-based platform that scales from 1 Gbps up to and exceeding the 400 Gbps speeds that enterprises are now using. This platform enables military and enterprise analysis teams to support almost any type of time series data analysis request now and into the future. Since the Xpress Platform already scales to meet any speed, it provides significant comfort in the ability to deliver a future-proof architecture.

Once an appropriate architecture is in place, you then need to control data overload. To be able to operate at full line rate, ALL of the pieces of your monitoring / data analysis architecture must be able to operate at this rate. This means the data access components (taps and SPANs), the data processing components, and the monitoring tools all need to be able to operate at peak performance. What you may not know is that many of the products just mentioned (depending upon the vendor) do not operate correctly at full line rate. Specifications stated on data sheets can vary significantly from vendor to vendor in an actual live network. No matter what equipment you deploy though, you need a high performance, non-blocking architecture that works as designed.

Next, you need to control the volume of data to prevent overload. Most data processing equipment (like packet brokers) do not store any data, they just pass it on to the security and monitoring tools. Data lakes are typically used to store the data. However, accessing the specific pieces of monitoring data that you are looking for can take a lot of time and effort to find and access. The data often comes in batch pulls, which means you must sort through a lot of potentially non-relevant data to finally get to the pieces that are relevant.

This is where a data intelligence solution that can store just the amount of data you need locally and feed that data to security and analysis tools at the speed they can handle really comes in handy. The Axellio data buffering function allows you to perform a superior load balancing function to accomplish this task. Load balancing is often used to extend the life of lower rate analysis tools by creating n+1 survivability. If one tool fails, the data load is redistributed to other tools. Axellio takes this a step further by feeding the tool just the right amount of data. The Axellio Xpress Platform load balancing solution allows Axellio products to hold data and then send it to security and monitoring tools EXACTLY when they need it. If the tool isn’t ready for the data, the Axellio solution simply “holds” the data until the tool is ready. This maximizes the tool CPU throughput and prevents load shedding, i.e. dropped data. Simply put, Axellio’s data buffering feature allows you to use your monitoring equipment to its fullest potential. The Axellio solution can store up to 1.2 Petabytes of data in 1 RU. More local data storage can be achieved by racking and stacking servers or using a JBOF solution.

Another unique and highly desirable feature of the Axellio Xpress Platform is the ability to capture, record, filter, and distribute data at line rate. This allows you to read the data as fast as you write it. You can also capitalize on its DVR-like capabilities that allow you to play, and replay, specific data you want to see. Companies are spending so much time now trying to find specific information in their data lakes that they are drowning. Axellio allows you to quickly find just what you are looking for — whether it’s packet data or RF data.

And finally, you also need the ability to support data display and data analytics capabilities for your high-speed environments. Many of the analytic tools on the market are sub 40 Gbps. For 40 Gbps and higher tools that do exist, they can be expensive. And good luck finding 100 Gbps (and higher data rate) tools. At higher data rates, you need analytics functions that can keep pace because if you can’t turn the data into actionable intelligence in a timely fashion, why do it — you will always be behind. This is where the Axellio Xpress Platform empowers you with a set of internal analytics functions that extend past 100 Gbps.

Whether you are a military organization, enterprise, or service provider, once you address the data realities of today (higher data speeds, higher data volume requirements, high speed data processing, and high-speed data analytics), you will finally be able to implement the data architecture you really need and want.

Accelerate into the data fast lane using Axellio’s XpressWay (the Axellio Xpress Platform) to quickly capture, manage, and understand YOUR data. More information is available here or if you have questions, reach out to Axellio and we can show you exactly how to optimize your monitoring and analysis solutions.

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Accelerate into the Data Fast Lane Using Axellio’s XpressWay

Accelerate into the Data Fast Lane Using Axellio’s XpressWay

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