Patent ID: 9571296
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method for managing visibility filters in a plurality of network visibility infrastructure elements of a visibility network, said plurality of network visibility infrastructure elements configured for redirecting packets to monitoring tools, said packets representing packets transmitted by a switching network or packets generated from said packets transmitted by said switching network, comprising: providing a plurality of filters, wherein at least one filter of said plurality of filters is associated with each of said plurality of network visibility infrastructure elements; providing a centralized filter control module, wherein said centralized filter control module has information pertaining network ports, tool ports, and visibility element ports of said plurality of network visibility infrastructure elements, said centralized filter control module being disposed remote from and communicably coupled with each of said plurality of filters; configuring said filters by specifying, for each of said filters, information pertaining to network port, filter parameters, action to be taken, and tool port, wherein said configuring is performed using said centralized filter control module; and computing, by the centralized filter control module, a path to be taken for a packet between a specified network port and a specified tool port based off of the information known to the filter control module pertaining to the network ports, the tool ports, and the visibility element ports of said plurality of network visibility infrastructure elements.