Network Instruments this week shipped an upgraded probe that the company says will enable customers to capture data at high speeds and store it in raw form for use in compliance, troubleshooting and network forensics.

The company's GigaStor Probe can help IT managers meet requirements for data retention compliance, capture anomalies and mine data for troubleshooting purposes. The data mining capabilities, the company says, could provide network managers with granular analysis of massive amounts of data.

The GigaStor Probe is typically deployed in a network core near trunked gigabit links, server farms or VoIP data paths. The new version captures data at a rate of 250M byte/sec and stores it to disk. The probe can also monitor up to four full-duplex gigabit links and can analyze the links either as trunked or individual ports. The appliance features either a 4T-byte or 8T-byte RAID array to accommodate the storage of data for long periods of time and comply with regulations.

The GigaStor Probe works in conjunction with Network Instruments Expert Observer or Observer Suite console software, which is installed on a desktop or laptop. The probe processes data locally to prevent the transmission of data to the Observer management console from slowing down the network. The product instead sends screen updates to the console to reduce that network overhead, the company says.

"Monitoring network traffic is not a problem in the regular realm, but when you get into the gigabit realm, you need to be able to retain network transactions and capture all the data at high speeds," says Charles Thompson, manager of sales engineering for Network Instruments. "The probe can perform real-time decoding to pinpoint problems and also retain data over the long term for forensics. We built the probe to make these tasks easier for network managers."

Network Instruments' GigaStor Probe competes with Network General InfiniStream products.

Available now, pricing for the GigaStor Probe starts at $35,000 for the 4T-byte probe and $50,000 for the 8T-byte probe. Pricing starts at about $2,900 for Expert Observer and at $4,000 for the Observer Suite.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.