Network - Cubro
The market responded with "Network TAPs" (Test Access Points) – passive splitters that copied traffic. However, TAPs alone could not filter, de-duplicate, or load-balance traffic. Cubro recognized a niche: the need for a "middlebox" that sits between the physical fiber and the security tools. This led to the development of the (Expert Access) and later the Fiber XP series. Unlike competitors who built NPBs as an afterthought to their switching OS, Cubro built its devices from the ground up using FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) technology. This architectural decision positioned Cubro as the go-to vendor for environments where latency below one microsecond and zero packet loss are mandatory. 2. The Core Philosophy: FPGA vs. CPU The technical differentiator of Cubro lies in its reliance on FPGA-based processing rather than general-purpose CPUs (x86). To understand why this matters, consider a standard server running Wireshark or Suricata: when traffic exceeds 1-2 Gbps, the CPU interrupts spike, and packets are dropped. Cubro’s hardware, conversely, uses programmable silicon gates that process every bit of a packet in parallel .
The workhorses of the fleet. The EXA48F (48 x 10G ports) and the FIBER XP 8x100G are ubiquitous in data centers. They support "Any-to-Any" mapping—any input port can send traffic to any output port or group of ports. Advanced features include NetFlow generation directly from the NPB (offloading routers) and L2-L4 header manipulation . cubro network
Recognizing that modern tools need more than just packets, Cubro introduced the XG series . This blurs the line between NPB and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). The XG can perform application identification (Facebook vs. Zoom), metadata extraction, and SSL decryption (acting as a man-in-the-middle) without requiring keys on the end server. 4. The "Killer Feature": Session-Aware Load Balancing Most engineers will cite Session-Aware (or Flow-Aware) Load Balancing as Cubro’s definitive "killer feature." Legacy NPBs often used simple Round-Robin or Hash-IP. If Tool A received packet 1 of a TCP flow and Tool B received packet 2, the IDS would fail to reassemble the stream, rendering it blind. The market responded with "Network TAPs" (Test Access
Cubro’s TAPs are unique because they are "fail-safe." If the TAP loses power, the fiber link continues to pass traffic (optical bypass). Their Open Gear series allows for rack-mounted, high-density fiber patching combined with TAP functionality. This led to the development of the (Expert
