Advanced Network Management with High-Speed Packet Capture and Monitoring Solutions

Welcome to the latest issue of GL's Newsletter! We are excited to announce the latest release of high-speed Ethernet and IP capture - FastRecorder™ and PacketExtractor™ application. This application provides wirespeed IP traffic filtering and recording up to 320 Gbps direct to disk for offline filtering, extraction, and analysis.

FastRecorder™ and PacketExtractor™

Overview

GL’s FastRecorder™ and PacketExtractor™ provide a comprehensive packet capture and analysis solution for managing networks of all sizes while ensuring lossless capture of high-speed IP traffic. These applications integrate with GL’s PacketScan™ HD hardware appliance and support various Ethernet interfaces, including 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 25 Gbps, 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps rates. GL offers both portable and rack-mount form factors for this hardware appliance, with customizable number of ports, RAM, and storage.

FastRecorder™ enables error-free packet capture on a large disk (NVME SSDs) for extended periods. Users can define filters to capture only packets of interest and set triggers to record incoming traffic based on specific conditions. This application can record from multiple Ethernet interfaces simultaneously.

PacketExtractor™ extracts packets of interest by allowing users to define complex filters, streams, time periods, storage size, and specific packet portions, such as headers, along with other parameters useful for diagnosing issues. It saves the extracted data in PCAP, PCAPNG, or HDL (GL’s proprietary) formats for further analysis.

GL's IP Analytics™ is an optional application that works with the applications above to measure Quality of Service by analyzing IP-based data streams. It provides detailed statistics for various parameters, including Layer 3, COS, Layer 4, IPv4/IPv6 Endpoints, UDP/TCP Endpoints, and conversations, enabling precise network performance analysis. It computes and visualizes network metrics with millisecond precision, such as Packet Count, Byte Count, Packets/sec, and Bits/sec, delivering real-time insights crucial for optimizing network efficiency.

Key Features

FastRecorder™:

  • Lossless capture of high-speed IP traffic over 1, 10, 25, 40, and 100 GigE links
  • Non-intrusive packet capture and recording over Electrical and Optical interfaces with nano-second time precision
  • High-precision traffic merging for recording across multiple ports
  • Enables selective traffic capture using hardware filters based on MAC, 802.1Q (VLANs), IPv4/IPv6, Tunnel Traffic (Tunnel 1 and Tunnel 2), TCP, UDP, SCTP, SIP, and RTP, with support for filtering inner layers of GTP, GRE, and VXLAN, including inner IPv4/IPv6 addresses and transport protocol port numbers (UDP, TCP, SCTP)
  • Supports eCPRI traffic recording based on eCPRI message types and UDP port numbers
  • Aggregated and per-port statistics, including captured, filtered/unfiltered, dropped frame percentage, and counts
  • Trigger-based recording based on date/time, capture rate, filter rate, per-port capture/filter rate, and port link status
  • Graphical statistics display, showing recorded statistics, historical trends, per-port rate, per-port frames per second, and port link status, with zoom-in and zoom-out options
  • Auto Resume feature, ensuring recording continues automatically after system interruptions such as PC reboots, application crashes, or Windows® updates
  • Port Event Log providing detailed records of port down count, port down time, port up time, and duration of the last downtime event

PacketExtractor™:

  • Extracts intended traffic from previous recordings into PCAP, PCAPNG, or HDL (GL Proprietary format) output traces
  • Provides extraction filters to filter UDP, TCP, SCTP port numbers, inner IP, inner UDP IP, and other protocols
  • Supports eCPRI traffic analysis to detect packet impairments such as missed packets, out-of-order packets, duplicate packets, and one-way delay
  • Displays recorded and aggregated statistics, including overall rate, frames per second, per-port rate, port frames per second, port link status, captured packets, filtered/unfiltered packets, dropped frame percentage over the full recording
  • Offers a graphical display for recorded statistics with historical trends, per-port rates, frame rates, and port link status, along with zoom-in and zoom-out options
  • Supports Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) protocol to decrypt ESP packets on IPv4 and IPv6 using ESP SA values
  • Provides a Packet Sanitize option to mask (replace) MAC, IPv4, and IPv6 addresses
  • Evaluates extracted network traffic at the IP level, providing detailed outer and inner protocol statistics, including physical ports, L3/L4 protocols, DSCP, IPv4/IPv6 or TCP/UDP endpoints, and SCTP conversations

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