Vineyard Networks Expands Application Visibility - Page 2

"Users have increasingly complex custom applications that they want to be able to classify," Richards said.

He added that since custom applications are often internal applications, Vineyard typically would never see them. The new custom definition API enables users to define those apps and provide details that will enable network tools to identify them.

NAVL 2.7 also has multi-processor support, which provides increased performance for users. As well, Richards noted that NAVL 2.7 on its own provides a greater degree of application coverage.

"Today our end-user community exceeds over 100,000 gateways around the world and with that exposure we've had the ability to up the ante on the number of applications that we're able to classify," Richards said. "We've got a redeveloped signature system that allows us to add thousands of application signatures with little to no degradation to things like performance and functionality."

Richards noted that Vineyard has some relationships with application vendors, though that's not always necessary to have. Vineyard is able to glean application information without the application vendor's help in many cases.

"We really don't need to have a relationship with an application vendor, though it does make it easier," Richards said. "We can brute force it just by getting visibility through customer deployments or by deploying the application in-house and we're able to get enough information from that."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.