Brix Networks goes enterprise

Brix Networks’ BrixMon is enterprise-oriented performance mgmt. software

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

Last month, Brix Networks announced BrixMon, enterprise performance management software that parallels the company’s BrixWorx software, which is primarily targeted at large, carrier-class environments.

Brix focuses on service assurance, service-level agreement (SLA) compliance, diagnostic monitoring, and in-depth testing. The company provides pre-deployment capabilities for network services with substantial Internet and wide-area requirements including VoIP, video, Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS), VPN and Web services. BrixMon covers much of this functionality without the pronounced SLA focus of BrixWorx.

Brix has aimed BrixWorx at “network operators,” and although the enterprise product offers some out-of-the-box executive reports, it is fundamentally targeted at robust network planning and control. In this sense it is complementary to more application-centric products such as those from BMC and Keynote.

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Last month, Brix Networks announced BrixMon, enterprise performance management software that parallels the company’s BrixWorx software, which is primarily targeted at large, carrier-class environments.

Brix focuses on service assurance, service-level agreement (SLA) compliance, diagnostic monitoring, and in-depth testing. The company provides pre-deployment capabilities for network services with substantial Internet and wide-area requirements including VoIP, video, Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS), VPN and Web services. BrixMon covers much of this functionality without the pronounced SLA focus of BrixWorx.

Brix has aimed BrixWorx at “network operators,” and although the enterprise product offers some out-of-the-box executive reports, it is fundamentally targeted at robust network planning and control. In this sense it is complementary to more application-centric products such as those from BMC and Keynote.

Brix’s architecture uses pre-packaged “verifiers,” or “verifier” agents, both of which are self-provisioning and which dynamically download configuration and test modules without disrupting operations.

Brix’s test suites (separately packaged suites are available for video and VoIP) are fairly granular, offering pre-deployment and readiness testing as well as diagnostics. There are tests for: e-mail performance (covering SMTP and POP3), IP addressing, FTP, ping, traceroute, Traceroute Reno (for TCP bandwidth), UDP/Echo (for host availability and performance), RADIUS server availability and authentication performance, streaming media, traffic measurements (including latency and utilization), DiffServ, VPNs, Web performance and Web-based applications. Brix also has a series of tests derived from the Cisco Service Assurance Agent.

A user can configure, schedule and prioritize tests fairly easily, while deployment of the verifiers at targeted locations across a network is designed for simplicity, speed and minimal maintenance. This is one of Brix’s strong suits, since its architecture is designed to support large, highly complex environments where deployment and administration are significant factors in assessing scalability. In particular, carriers can deploy verifiers at hundreds or even thousands of demarcation points, where the verifiers can perform tests to measure service effectiveness across a WAN from the customer perspective. Communication between “verifiers” and the Brix console, with its Web-based interface, is encrypted and secure.

When Brix Networks began (the company was founded in the summer of 1999 and began shipping its initial products in the fall of 2000), its focus was overall IP service diagnostics with automated calculations for SLA compliance and SLA penalties. The SLA features are, somewhat ironically, not a focus in the current enterprise-oriented BrixMon, although over time enterprises can expect to benefit from Brix’s strong history.

Brix has grown in large part in response to customer-specific requirements - for instance, offering some synthetic testing as frequently as, in some cases, 10-millisecond intervals for ensuring VoIP quality. Prioritized quality-of-service support for MPLS was another specific customer requirement.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.