Plixer One 19.7 – Unlocking the Next Level of Network Observability

In today’s IT environments, network and security teams face ever-growing challenges in maintaining visibility, efficiency, performance, and security across their infrastructure. Responding swiftly to threats, ensuring connectivity and user experiences, and simplifying operations have never been more crucial. With the release of Plixer One 19.7, we’re introducing powerful capabilities—AI-driven assistance, advanced SNMP collection, and comprehensive Zscaler integration—that directly address these critical needs.

Plixer One is the industry’s most comprehensive network observability and defense solution, helping organizations maintain thorough visibility of traffic flows throughout their entire hybrid environment.  These enhancements underscore our commitment to harnessing the full potential of data within your ecosystem and providing accurate insights to address challenges and evolve your network to meet current and future demands. 

For detailed information on deploying Plixer One and leveraging its capabilities, see the Plixer product documentation

Key Features and Enhancements Now Available

• Zscaler ZTE Data Log Ingestion, capturing hundreds of metrics from ZIA and ZPA events
• Plixer AI Assistant with a choice to use our LLM or yours
• SNMP collection to trend Layer 2 interface statistics
• Increased Kubernetes visibility with insight into traffic flows between multi-container pods
• Integrated management UI for Plixer Replicator and added support for IPv6 data replication

Here is what you can expect with Plixer One 19.7.

AI-Enhanced User Experience for Faster Reporting and Decision-Making

19.7 marks the general availability of Plixer AI Assistant. With our AI assistant, Plixer One fundamentally transforms how network teams approach observability, troubleshoot root cause and isolate anomalous behavior. Our AI assistant streamlines user navigation, accelerates report generation, and simplifies ad hoc reporting— all through intuitive, plain-language interactions. Whether you’re onboarding new analysts or rapidly responding to network incidents, Plixer AI reduces complexity and eliminates the guesswork from network operations.

Ask how to perform specific tasks, such as creating a report or adjusting alert thresholds, and Plixer AI will guide you to the relevant section in the UI, along with the necessary documentation.

 Describe a network issue in plain language and receive a relevant report, along with an explanation of why the AI assistant selected this report type.

Some examples:

• “How can I add a user?”
• “Show me the top MITRE alerts.”
• “Show top destinations report for a specific host over the last 20 days”

Ask to modify an existing report – such as adjusting time ranges, adding filters, or focusing on specific interfaces – without needing to dig through configuration menus. 

Use our LLM’s or your own. Plixer hosts high performance LLM’s with an inference API in AWS Bedrock, ensuring secure, safe, and compliance with standards such as HIPAA.  To meet corporate governance policy and accommodate unique business needs proprietary LLM’s are also supported.

SNMP Visibility Meets NetFlow/IPFIX Precision

The latest SNMP enhancements provide robust, detailed insights by seamlessly unifying interface statistics such as bytes, packets, errors, and drops—with existing NetFlow/IPFIX data, offering enhanced granularity and deeper insights. This unified visibility approach empowers teams to pivot effortlessly between high-level SNMP overviews and detailed flow data for pinpoint-accurate analysis.  

Currently, Plixer One collects interface and device information to provide additional details identifying devices on a customer network. 

This release introduces new SNMP features to better position Plixer to customers who require both SNMP and NetFlow/IPFIX collection. 

MIB-II interface statistics collection 

• Bytes 
• Packets 
• Errors 
• Drops 

Support for: SNMPv2, and SNMPv3 with AES 256-bit encryption

Increased Kubernetes Visibility

Plixer One enriches telemetry with deeper insights into inter-pod traffic flows, turning isolated telemetry into a meaningful arsenal of data for you to easily trace issues from cloud service event to workloads and across the entire datacenter network path, ensuring faster resolution, stronger security, and more reliable performance.

Observe traffic within and between different Pods and service endpoints that route traffic to multi-container pods

• See spikes in latency and reductions in throughput between a client
• Easily identify issues with the service mesh, overloaded pods, or a network policy

Understand pod specific issues with performance, traffic distribution and misconfiguration in your load-balancing strategy

Generate reports and access logged data on

• Internal error rates
• Latency & consumption of Memory, CPU and other resources
• Suspicious or malicious connections
• Health and Vitals statistics

Seamless Zscaler Integration for Complete Security Visibility

Zero-trust access tools, while essential, often introduce blind spots in traffic monitoring for network operations. The new Zscaler integration addresses this challenge directly by offering visibility into encrypted tunnels where Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) or Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is in use. Plixer One helps Zscaler customers’ NetOps teams eliminate visibility gaps that arise from the implementation of Zero Trust access.

Set up Zscaler ZTE as an exporter of logged data from active ZIA and ZPA implementations.

Real-time, cohesive visibility into user flows from source, across the internet, and to cloud and data center destinations.

Comprehensive flow reports covering 100+ unique Zscaler-specific elements derived from specific logs, including those listed below.

Logs Supported
ZIA: DNS and Firewall
ZPA: User Activity, Browser Access, App Connector, Service Edge, Private Cloud Controller

Access to various reports by referencing the exporter in plain language using the AI Assistant

Replicator Enhancements (Version 20.0)

To continue making data replication easy, efficient, and affordable for those needing to duplicate network data for use in various systems, teams, and processes, we have made several enhancements to Plixer Replicator.  As an integrated component of the Plixer One platform, Plixer Replicator can now be fully managed and deployed from  Plixer One. The tight integration and shared UI enable users to streamline workflows and leverage Plixer One automations, reporting, and AI assistant more effectively. A separate appliance is no longer required but remains available to support requirements for a standalone deployment option. 

IPv6 Replication Supported for Traffic from IPv6 Exporters and IPv6 Addresses.

Fragmented Packet Support is available for all packet fragments larger than the supported MTU as if they came from the original device.

Resolves spoofed packet issues in cloud deployments.  It now uses a new Flow Collector profile that does not spoof the addresses in Layer 3 headers, and a new custom header has been added to flow data. The collector now correctly interprets the cloud exporter IP address, allowing for the successful routing of packets without changes.

High-Performance Auto-Replicate optimizes replication for distributed flow collectors to ensure optimal performance.  When activated, all flows can be sent to a single IP, and Plixer Replicator will route traffic to collectors based on resource availability.  Auto-replicate determines which collector(s) should service flow traffic from an exporter based on data volume and collector capacity.

Lossless Config Changes address challenges resulting from the first packet not being forwarded after a configuration change.  Loss of the first packet affects syslog and SNMP trap use cases, where the first alarm from a server would not be forwarded. Admins can now make configuration updates without needing a restart of the Replicator and with assurance that the first packet seen by a policy will update a profile and also be forwarded.

Upgrade to Plixer One 19.7

Plixer One 19.7 release simplifies and supercharges network observability and security operations. By integrating advanced AI-driven interactions, detailed SNMP data analytics, and groundbreaking visibility into encrypted cloud traffic with Zscaler, Plixer One ensures that your network and security teams can operate confidently, swiftly, and efficiently. Explore these new features today and experience firsthand how Plixer One continues to elevate your strategic capabilities and operational performance.

To learn more, read the 19.7 change log, explore the Plixer One platform page or visit Plixer One enterprise

Also, be sure to read the related press release and visit the Plixer AI webpage to discover more about AI. Download the AI Assistant technology overview.