Traffic Replay up to 100G Line Rate
Solution Description
Napatech FPGA SmartNICs enable traffic replay up to 100G line rate for any packet size. This allows businesses to build reconfigurable testing platforms based on standard servers – creating a powerful, cost-effective and 100% reliable alternative to proprietary network test solutions.
PROBLEM
Identifying and mitigating network issues is a complex and resource-heavy task. As the density of systems and infrastructures is growing, so is the challenge of ensuring peak network performance.
Various solutions are available for testing and assessing the performance of a device or system, but many rely on traffic simulation alone. And while such tools do provide some valuable and realistic patterns, they cannnot deliver a perfect reflection of reality, which in many instances is crucial to achieve 100% reliable test results.
SOLUTION
Napatech FPGA SmartNICs enable network engineers and developers to capture and replay traffic with nanosecond precision. Rather than basing tests on synthetic data, the replay feature makes it possible to recreate actual traffic scenarios that have caused network issues such as outages, breaches, Quality of Service (QoS) problems, etc. This provides real-world causality and offers the best possible outset for improving and hardening your infrastructure.
Napatech FPGA SmartNICs also support synchronized replay across multiple appliances, enabling large-scale test setups with perfect timing and precision – and substantial cost benefits.
APPLICATION
The traffic replay feature is extremely useful for testing a single device in a network, e.g. a switch, router or firewall – or for testing more complex infrastructures or cloud services that need to behave in a specific way under certain circumstances. By recalculating the time stamps, it is possible to replay e.g. 10G PCAP files at 10x the speed, thereby recreating the traffic burst pattern at a load that fits any link speed. The feature also makes it possible to replay all traffic scenarios at full line rate, which is extremely useful for simulating line utilization and verifying system strength at all speeds.
KEY USE CASES
• Replay from file exactly as the traffic was recorded, either out in the field or back in the lab
• Control replay speed to simulate different traffic profiles
• Synchronize traffic replay from multiple FPGA SmartNICs – within the same appliance or at remote locations
FEATURE SPECS
Traffic replay is based on an advanced Napatech feature that enables transmit on time stamp. The transmit is controlled the time stamp, which means that the exact capture timing can be replayed with nanosecond precision.
Key specs include:
• Line rate transmit from application to network ports enables network simulation at 1G, 10G, 40G and 100G port speeds
• Supports network test and simulation up to 100G line rate for any packet size
• Enables replay of PCAP files
• Enables replay as captured based on time stamp
• Transmits frames immediately or according to nanosecond time stamp
• Configurable rate limiter for control of network load
