Link™ Inline Software
for Napatech FPGA-based SmartNICs
Napatech SmartNICs and Link™ Inline Software provide a hardware-based solution for accelerating network and security applications dramatically increasing application performance while reducing CPU consumption. The Link™ Inline Software provides a processing architecture which offloads and accelerates flow aware application dataplanes offering the ability to scale open source and custom applications to >100 Gbps in standard servers with lower complexity and enhanced scalability than alternatives.
Link™ Inline Software supports a broad range of applications and use cases – and can immediately improve an organization’s ability to scale critical networking use cases.
Key Benefits
Napatech provides the unique combination of the industries highest performance FPGA-based SmartNIC with software for offload and accelerate Inline networking and security applications.
High Performance
Scale network and security applications to 100Gbps
Extremely Low Latency
Minimize network delays for inline applications
Significantly Reduced CPU Utilization
Return CPU cores to applications and services
Total Cost of Ownership
Cost effective scaling for your data center
Reconfigurability
Completely programmable for custom requirements
Environmentally Sound
Lower power, space, and cooling
Solution Overview
Networking and cybersecurity applications and services are often deployed as software in high volume, low-cost standard servers. Many, however, require higher throughput and lower latency than can be provided by compute platforms with basic network interface cards (NICs).
Napatech’s Link™ Inline software and SmartNIC hardware provides the ability to scale open source and custom networking and security applications to >100 Gbps in standard servers. This stateful, flow-aware solution allows applications running in software to dynamically and programatically update processing actions in SmartNIC hardware on a per flow basis, tightly coupled with the application via simple to use rules or standards-based APIs. The solution scales to greater than 100 million flows, each monitored in a stateful manner with over 2 million flow setups and teardowns per second with extremely low latency.
To find out more see:
Link™ Inline Software Product Brief
Key Features
Napatech Link™ Inline Software provides the Napatech SmartNIC family with a robust feature set and extendable architecture allowing configurable, flow-based offload and acceleration for networking and security applications.
Link™ Inline Software for Napatech
Stateful Flow Processing
200 Gbps Throughput
2 Million Flow setups / second
100 million flow table entries
Inline, Packet Capture, or Tap modes
Configurable packet classification / match fields
Extensive actions
Load balancing to application instances
Link™ Inline Block Diagram
Compatible Napatech FPGA-based SmartNICs
The Link™ Inline Software is available for our family of FPGA-based SmartNICs.
NT200A02 SmartNIC
8x10G, 2×10/25G, 4×10/25G, 2x40G, 2x100G
The NT200A02 SmartNIC is a full height, half length QSFP28 PCIe card based on a powerful FPGA-based architecture which enables 8x10G, 2×10/25G, 4×10/25G, 2x40G or 2x100G applications.
NT100A01 SmartNIC
4×1/10G, 4×10/25G
The NT100A01 SmartNIC is a full height, half length SFP28 PCIe card based on a powerful FPGA-based architecture, which enables 4×1/10G or 4×10/25G applications.
These SmartNICs offer flexibility to create high-performance solutions in server platforms for supporting network infrastructures up to 100G and can be reconfigured to support specific SmartNIC functionality. They are available in both a self-contained cooling and passive cooling version.
Tech specs
| FEATURES | Link™ Inline Software for Napatech FPGA SmartNICs |
| Rx Packet Processing | • Line rate Rx up to 100 Gbps for packet size 64 – 10,000 bytes • Multi-port packet merge, sequenced in time stamp order |
| L2, L3 and L4 protocol classification | • L2: Ether II, IEEE 802.3 LLC, IEEE 802.3/802.2 SNAP • L2: PPPoE Discovery, PPPoE Session, Raw Novell • L2: ISL, 3x VLAN, 7x MPLS • L3: IPv4, IPv6 • L4: TCP, UDP, ICMP, SCTP • L2 and L3/L4 (IP/TCP/UDP) Tx checksum generation • L2 and L3/L4 (IP/TCP/UDP) Rx checksum verification |
| Tunneling support | • GTP, IP-in-IP, GRE, NVGRE, VxLAN, Pseudowire, Fabric Path |
| General purpose filters | • Pattern match, network port, protocol, length check, error conditions |
| Stateful flow management (NT100A01 and NT200A02) | • Configurable flow definitions based on 2-, 3-, 4-, 5- or 6-tuple • Up to 160 million bidirectional IPv4 or IPv6 flows (NT200A02) • Up to 100 million bidirectional IPv4 or IPv6 flows (NT100A01) • Learning rate: 3 million flows/sec • Flow match/actions: forward to specific host Rx queue, drop, fast forward to network port, update metrics in flow record • Flow termination: TCP protocol, timeout, application-requested • Flow records: Rx packet/byte counters and TCP flags, delivered to application at flow termination |
| Hash keys | • Custom 2 × 128 bits and 2 × 32 bits with separate bit masks • Symmetric hash keys • Protocol field from inner or outer headers |
| Load distribution | • Hash key, filter-based or per flow • To local CPU cores via host buffers/queues |
| Packet descriptors and metadata | • PCAP and Napatech descriptor formats • Time stamp, network port ID, header offsets • Hash key, color/tag • 64-bit pointer for flow lookup • 64-bit correlation key with maskable fields (packet fingerprint) • Protocol and error information |
| Slicing | • Dynamic offset or fixed offset from start or end of packet |
| Tx Packet Processing | • Line rate Tx up to 100 Gbps for packet size 64 – 10,000 bytes • Per-port traffic shaping • Port-to-any-port forwarding |
| Latency | • Port to port: < 5 us • Port to host: < 30 us |
| Host Buffers and Queues | • Rx queues: 128, Tx queues: 128 • Rx buffer size: 16 MB – 1 TB, Tx buffer size: 4 MB |
| Advanced Statistics | • Extended RMON1 per port • Packets and bytes per filter/color and per stream/queue |
| Time Stamping and Synchronization | • OS time, PPS and IEEE 1588-2008 PTP V2 • NT-TS synchronization between Napatech SmartNICs • Time stamp formats: Unix 10 ns, Unix 1 ns, PCAP 1 us, PCAP 1 ns • Rx time stamp with 1 ns resolution |
| Monitoring Sensors | • PCB temperature level with alarm • FPGA temperature level with alarm and automatic shutdown • Temperature of critical components • Individual optical port temperature or light level with alarm • Voltage or current overrange with alarm • Cooling fan speed with alarm |
| Supported OS | • Linux kernel 3.0 – 3.19, 4.0 – 4.18, 5.0 – 5.11 (64-bit) |
| Supported APIs | • libpcap v. 1.7.3, 1.8.1, 1.9.0 • DPDK v. 20.11 • NTAPI (Napatech API) |
| Supported Hardware and Transceivers |
NT200A02:
NT100A01: |
Resources and downloads
Product Brief: