This ability is key for users that need to guarantee that all network traffic on the wire gets captured and processed. If anything needs to be discarded, it is a matter of choice by the user, not a limitation of the adapter.
Full Line Rate Capture
Full Line Rate Capture
The foundation for all Napatech Network Adapters is the ability to capture network traffic at full line rate, for all frame sizes, without data loss. Furthermore, Napatech Network Adapters have an extremely low server CPU utilization, typically below 1% at full line rate capture, for all frame sizes.
1 Gbps and 10 Gbps Full Line Rate Capture Performance
| Frame Size (in bytes) | 64 | 128 | 256 | 512 | 1024 | >1500 |
| Packet Loss | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Host CPU Load | <1% | <1% | <1% | <1% | <1% | <1% |
Napatech Network Adapters have been designed to always have a multiple of two ports to enable applications to monitor both the Rx and Tx lines of a data link, and thereby be able to easily make correlation analysis. Other features, like Channel Merging, further facilitates such types of applications. Current adapter configurations are:
Adapter Configurations
| Adapter Model | Connectivity | Capture Performance | Bus Interface | Bus Transfer Speed |
| NT20E | 2 x 10 Gbps | 20 Gbps | PCIe | 12.5 Gbps |
| NT8E | 8 x 1 Gbps | 8 Gbps | PCIe | 12.5 Gbps |
| NT4E | 4 x 1 Gbps | 4 Gbps | PCIe | 12.5 Gbps |
Even though some Napatech Network Adapters have a higher aggregated physical connectivity capacity (e.g. 2 x 10 Gbps) than the bus speed of the host, this can still be valuable in a full line rate scenario by using these adapter features:
- Burst Buffer Memory: Full line rate traffic often occurs in bursts, and the on-board memory on the adapter will automatically buffer the traffic in case of traffic bursts or congestion in the host.
- Filters: If the user is only interested in specific types of traffic, the use of filters may reduce the amount of data transferred to the host.
- Deduplication: If the traffic contains duplicate frames, turning on the deduplication feature allows the adapter to discard duplicate frames before transfer to the host.
- Slicing: If it is not necessary to process all of the packet payload, the last part can be sliced away in the adapter, thereby lowering the bandwidth requirements for the host transfer.
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Local Retransmit: If all traffic must be captured continuously at all times, and the bus bandwidth is not enough, the adapter can filter and forward parts of the traffic to other adapters in a daisy chain, and thereby share the load.