Netscout has expanded the capacity of its Arbor Cloud DDoS mitigation service to 33 terabits per second, a significant increase from the previous peak of 15 Tbps. The upgrade spans 16 global scrubbing centers and is designed to address the evolving nature of distributed denial of service attacks that now leverage artificial intelligence.
The expansion follows Netscout’s acquisition of DDoS and web application firewall services from DigiCert in May. According to Carlos Morales, senior vice president and general manager of Arbor Cloud at Netscout, attackers are increasingly using AI throughout the entire attack lifecycle, including reconnaissance, exploitation, and hardening compromised devices.
Morales noted that this technological shift allows for the creation of larger, more coordinated botnets capable of launching direct, stateful attacks. These modern threats differ from earlier reflection and amplification techniques that relied on spoofing addresses to overwhelm targets with traffic from third-party servers. Today’s AI-driven botnets generate volume directly from compromised devices, sustaining real sessions that are harder to filter at the network border.
The company’s infrastructure upgrades address three key areas: bandwidth, hardware, and software. The buildout required substantial carrier capacity to absorb incoming attack traffic and return clean traffic to legitimate users. Hardware enhancements include 100 gigabit ports and increased routing and switching capacity at the network edge.
On the software side, Netscout inspects incoming traffic to make pass or drop decisions rather than modifying connections. Morales explained that simple volumetric attacks are blocked using broad filtering rules, while more complex threats require layered mitigation techniques built on Arbor technology. This approach distinguishes their service from content delivery network providers that terminate connections.
Morales emphasized that the 33 Tbps capacity is dedicated specifically to DDoS and application security. When asked about future capacity goals, he indicated that the current buildout is not a one-time event, though specific plans for expansion beyond 33 Tbps were not detailed.
