Network Traffic Splitting

Traffic Splitting devices are located in-line on a network link and perform sorting of the traffic, e.g. splitting of a network link with mixed traffic into multiple links with traffic of specific types. Such an application must also support merging of traffic from a number of links into a single link.

Traffic Splitting will often be used to provide better QoS for some traffic types than for others, e.g. to extract VoIP traffic from a network stream and transmit it on a dedicated voice line to achieve better voice quality. Traffic Splitting is supported by the Napatech Network Adapters via functionality, such as:

• Packet Classification: The adapter can classify the frames before they are delivered to the host CPU (e.g. recognize the type of frame), whereby the host processing can be accelerated.
• Host-based Retransmit: Enables captured frames to be retransmitted to the network at line speed for any network condition with a minimum of host CPU processing.
• Channel Merging: Enables network frames from several ports to be merged in reception time order and placed in one host buffer. This functionality simplifies merging and retransmit of network frames from several ports to a single port.