The Napatech Software Development Tools are software command line tools that are provided free of charge and can be incorporated into Napatech OEM customers’ own application software or used for test and debugging of Napatech products. All of the tools are available as C source code. The tools are high-quality code that is actively used and tested by the Napatech test and development teams.
The tools can be used for a variety of tasks:
-
Adapter Information: A number of tools are available for retrieving information on the network adapter (AdapterInfo), its capabilities (Capabilities), and driver software (DriverInfo).
-
Monitoring and Diagnostics: Tools are provided for collecting status information for debug purposes (SupportInfo), monitoring hardware temperature (Hardware Monitor), retrieving statistic counters (Statistics) and performing diagnostic tests (Diagnostics).
-
Rapid Configuration: The Network Adapter can be configured on the fly using Napatech Programming Language (NTPL) commands executed via a command line script tool (NtplTool). Values can be directly written to and read from the memory of Network Interface Modules (NIMs), such as SFPs and XFPs, (NimConfig). Time stamp and time synchronization configuration and status monitoring tools are also available (TimeConfig).
-
Packet Capture: Example source code is available showing how a typical packet capture application can be created. The application example captures data to a hard disk or server memory for a specified time or until a specified amount of data has been captured, whichever condition is met first. The Capture application can be used with either a Napatech Network Adapter or a standard Network Interface Card (NIC) enabling performance comparisons.
-
Netflow Creation: Example source code is available that shows how to create flows and gather netflow statistical information for these flows. The flow information is stored in a binary data file. Typical netflow information can be IP source & destination addresses, source & destination port numbers, packet & byte counts, start & end time etc. The NetFlow application can be used with either a Napatech network adapter or a standard NIC enabling performance comparisons.
- Load Balancing: When the Netflow application is used together with a Napatech Network Adapter, the load balancing functionality can be tested by running 4, 8 or more threads on individual CPU cores and distributing these threads to multiple CPUs using hash information.