EFFICIENT CAPTURE AND STREAMING OF DATA PACKETS

• US 20200137205A1
• Filed: 12/31/2019
• Published: 04/30/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Accedian Networks Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Accedian Networks Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lizotte, Sylvain, Lamontagne, Marc-Andre, Gelinas, Marc, Viens, Yanick
• Granted Patent: US 11,233,885 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/022 by sampling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/028 by filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/36 by determining packet size, e.g. maximum transfer unit [MTU]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

What is disclosed is a method for efficient capture and streaming of data packets in a network device comprises capturing data packets matching predetermined filters, packaging said data packets into samples, and aggregating one or more samples in a high speed bus payload. The method also comprises transferring said high speed bus payload to a CPU, extracting said samples from the high speed bus payload and storing said samples in a shared memory of the CPU, and accessing said samples from the shared memory for streaming to one or more client.

Claims

1. A method for analysis of data packets at a network device having an input port configured to receive packets from a network and an output port configured to transmit the data packets to the network, the method comprising:

capturing, by a programmable processor, a data packet received on the input port matching one or more predetermined criteria;

creating one or more metadata related to the captured packet; and

transmitting a copy of said captured packet along with the metadata to one or more client.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said metadata is added in a header to the data packet.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said matching one or more predetermined criteria is done via a layer-2 filtering protocol.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said matching one or more predetermined criteria is done via a layer-3 filtering protocol.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising queuing and shaping said captured packet before transmitting to one or more client.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said transmitting is done via an Ethernet bus.

7. A network device comprising:

an input port configured to receive packets from a network;

a packet capture processor configured to;

capture a data packet received on the input port matching one or more predetermined criteria;

create one or more metadata related to the captured packet; and

transmit a copy of said captured packet along with the metadata to one or more client.

8. The network device of claim 7 wherein the packet capture processor is configured to capture the packets using a layer-2 filtering protocol.

9. The network device of claim 7 wherein the packet capture processor is configured to capture is configured to filter the packets using a layer-3 filtering protocol.