Plug-and-play DPI integration ensures
faster time to market
Case Study
Challenge
A leading network OEM needed a packet capture solution that could be seamlessly integrated with their DPI engine, R&S®PACE 2. They were deploying standard servers and wanted to move functionalities from software to hardware – but keen to avoid the added time and cost often inflicted by a system integration.
Solution
Napatech delivered a high-performance and lossless capture solution, based on Napatech FPGA SmartNICs, which could be quickly and seamlessly integrated with the PACE 2 DPI engine.
Benefits
This integration limited the risks from the very outset, helping the OEM to curb any uncertainties, significantly reduce development costs and reduce time-to-market.
Industry pain points
Inherently, OEMs face the twofold challenge of accelerating performance while also ensuring a fast time-to-market. And with the continuous data surge and speeds approaching 100G, these challenges are only growing more pronounced. To accommodate client needs, OEMs now need solutions that will allow them to double or even triple capacity on a yearly basis.
A common and cost-efficient approach to accelerate performance is deploying general purpose servers and offloading selected workloads from software to hardware. This frees up CPU resources for the software to focus on the core capabilities, e.g. Quality of Service (QoS) analytics. But it also introduces several concerns as companies no longer have the needed engineering resource in-house to develop the hardware nor take on time-consuming integration and development work. OEMs are therefore facing significant uncertainties regarding resource and time-to-market: will the various systems collaborate? How much time and effort will the integration require? What if the hardware fails to deliver as specified?
Client challenge
These were the concerns of a leading network OEM when they approached Napatech for support. To stay competitive, the OEM wanted to focus resources on their core capabilities of developing high-end QoS intelligence rather than building and sustaining the needed technology to accelerate performance.
Like most other suppliers in the industry, they were now using standard servers but needed the technology to ensure that all data was delivered quickly and efficiently to their application. This required a high-performance packet capture solution.
The OEM was deploying Rohde & Schwarz’s Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) engine R&S®PACE 2 to perform the traffic classification and meta data extraction. As the OEM wanted to avoid any added overhead and frustration caused by a difficult integration process, a decisive factor in their choice of capture supplier was the capability to quickly and seamlessly integrate with PACE 2. Already a longtime Rohde & Schwarz partner, Napatech was a natural choice.
Our solution
From previous projects, it had been verified that Napatech’s FPGA-driven SmartNICs were fully compatible with PACE 2. The OEM therefore integrated the 100G Napatech FPGA SmartNICs. This would not only ensure that absolutely all data packets were delivered to the application – even at 100G. It would also ensure that the data was collated in the correct communication streams, and as such optimize the overall performance.
Through intelligent load balancing, the SmartNIC ensured outstanding real-time performance of the application. This was achieved by utilizing all CPU cores, thus removing bottlenecks in the server. That way, the OEM was afforded the capacity to focus on their software processing and ultimately deliver smarter and more efficient QoS analytics to their clients.
Benefits
The plug-and-play integration of PACE 2 and Napatech’s capture technology limited the integration risks from the very outset. It helped the OEM to curb any uncertainties, significantly reduce development costs and step up their time-to-market.
Key features
• Zero packet loss at sustained max traffic
• Intelligent load balancing
Added benefits
• Easy & risk-free integration
• Faster time-to-market
• High-quality technical documentation
• Specialist technical support
