Buffer Structure Configuration

Buffer Size Configuration can have dramatic implications on the performance of many applications. Therefore the Napatech Network Adapters support a very flexible server buffer setup. The frames captured by Napatech Network Adapters can be fed to the host application in a number of server buffers. Different distribution schemes can be employed to split up the frames into the server buffers, such as by traffic type or by flows. As different applications furthermore have different requirements for processing the packet streams, it is also possible to configure the size and the number of host buffers.

Different applications have different requirements when it comes to latency or processing of the frames.

The flexible server buffer structure supported by the Napatech Network Adapters support applications with different requirements:

• Applications needing short latency can have frames delivered in small chunks, optionally with a fixed maximum latency.
• Applications without latency requirements can have data delivered in large chunks, providing a more effective server CPU processing of the data.
• Applications requiring large server buffers to perform time-consuming processing of certain frames, e.g. uncompressing  HTTP frames, or to process bursty network traffic.
• Applications that cannot process data on the fly but can allocate very large host buffers (up to 128GB) and thereby capture very large amounts of network data before processing it.

If the server application processing cannot keep up with the rate of frames delivered by the adapter, and if the server buffer gets filled up, the adapter will automatically start using the on-board buffer memory to extend the buffer capacity.